Coming up, what happened before the bulldozers started rolling DOWN GILEAD LANE?  How could it have come to the point of knocking down Mr. Key’s old house?  And whatever changes have been happening, how will they affect the REST of Coleraine?  A look back at the behind-the-scenes goings on over the past year reveals some of the answers, and it reveals an approaching shadow on the next Down Gilead Lane.

How about you…

Have you ever gotten a sense of the darkness in this world, or felt afraid of something scary you’ve heard about?

Check this out…

Just before Jesus went through His trial and death, He said these words to a crowd of people:

You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.

Jesus was talking about Himself, and He was predicting His death.  The people around Him might not have known it, but they were in the presence of the Light—without Jesus in their world, all they had was darkness.  So, now we have Jesus’ words when we read the Bible, and now we know that He was talking about Himself when He said all this about light.  But Jesus is no longer in the world... so does that mean we have to live in darkness?  Look at that last sentence:

Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.

For those of us who have put our trust in Jesus, we will always have the light, because His light lives in us—it makes us “sons of light”—almost like we are little lights ourselves.   The way we push back the darkness that is otherwise all around us, is to put our trust in Jesus (The Light) and to be little lights to push back the darkness around us.  Trusting Jesus means we don’t have to be afraid of anything, because no matter how dark and scary the world around us may be, His light and His love and His power are greater than the darkness and scary stuff!