I’ve felt a lot of righteous anger in my soul over the last few days. Anger peppered in tears. Anger that is toppling out of me and longing to come out in some physical form. Anger that was thankfully lessened with laughter but dissolved in heartache.

In a shorter amount of words: I’m mad at the world and I’m mad at darkness.

I’ve seen a lot of darkness and bad things thus far in my life. I’ve seen addiction, death, abuse. I’ve wrestled with suicide. I’ve LIVED in darkness.

Darkness angers me.

The last two days I’ve heard story of tragedies that desperately hurt my heart.

Three years ago I met South Africa for the first time. I met the townships, the people, the families. I met the students of Bridges of Hope Academy.

South Africa changed my view of darkness. It changed my view of a lot of things.

Two days ago I found out one of the boys that was a senior when I was there was shot and killed in a township.

I got mad.

Incredibly mad and sad with the overwhelming desire to cry and hit something at the same time.

Life just isn’t fair.

I don’t know what happened; I don’t know where he exactly was in life. I just know he’s gone and I’m mad at the darkness.

I stood railing at the darkness for a while the other night. I couldn’t understand why this 22 year old kid, who’d already gone through so much, who had gotten out, found Jesus, was taken in such a way as he was.

And after I had railed at the darkness of the senseless tragedies that I had heard about in the past couple of days I remembered the light.

It’s there; fighting against the dark forces. Crashing into the evil. Forcing what is bad into the light to crumble.

And I was reminded of an intense picture during some incredibly dark times in my life. Days where I prayed with each step I took, days where I didn’t sleep for fear of another day starting.

Days where I just wanted to end it all.

And Jesus gave me this picture of the darkest room I had ever seen in my life.

No windows, no doors, no way for light to creep in.

And then a dim night light turned on.

And I realized in that moment that He was always there; no matter how dark, how lonely I felt.

No matter how angry at the world I became;

The light is still there. The darkness may make it seem small; but it’s there.

I’m ok with the fact that I rail against the darkness. That I get mad when senseless death happens or when wife lose their husbands and babies lose their dads. I’m ok that I get mad when things break my heart.

It’s ok to yell at the darkness the clammers unwanted into our lives.

But what I remembered Monday night is that I must NEVER forget the promise that the light will always break through.

The light always invades, always plunders and always crush the dark.

So keep your nightlight on. And rally against the dark.

❤