Day 7
Broken Light
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us. How does God’s heart so full of love, so full of goodness, witness all this breaking sadness that has become His children’s reality, and not break also?
The thunder drum rolls and the lightning flashes and tears fall and fall and fall. If this stormy dark was all there was, our world would always be in flood.
But the darkness isn’t all there is.
As I write, this rain falls, gently, steadily outside. The grey clouds empty their grief on the earth. But their tears meet something else. A warm tropical sun breaks through, piercing the grey, all golden, all light. Like an unexpected grace.
Raindrops continue to free fall through the light, fragile prisms mingling, spraying through blazing rays. They dash themselves splashing on the grass below, all at once absorbed into the earth, all at once broken on the bricks of our verandah. So small, so frail, so weak. Who would have thought that tears so tiny could break anything as they break themselves apart.
But from the perspective of the valley beneath our home, these fragile tears are breaking blazing light, breaking brilliant light into a million tiny pieces. A million tiny pieces forming just one picture: the seven colours of the rainbow.
When the stormy darkness meets the blazing light, something entirely new is born.
A rainbow is broken light. And so are we.
In the beginning, the genesis of all things God said “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) and there was. Light upon light upon light. Supernova star explosions pierced the dark, expelling it, flashing light, scattering star dust, forging all the elements required for life on earth1. All the building blocks of this spinning planet we stand on today were born in light, through light, by Light.
We, like our Heavenly Father, were born to live in light, alive in God’s light, seeing light (Psalm 36:9) being light (Matthew 5:14-16).
God had said “Let us make humankind in our image” (Genesis 1:26). And we were… for a while. But then the darkness fell, the light within us grew dim, and human kind has been falling like the rain ever since.
From before we began to write down time, light has been breaking, the light that once was us; and we drown in floods today, not of God’s making, but of the absence of Him in human hearts, the absence of wholeness; the emptiness within, creating pain, sorrow and darkness without. Broken light.
And this is where this chapter of our story begins.
In the dark.
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Genesis 6:5
The story of Noah in the Old Testament begins with the story of this broken light; broken humanity breaking each other, breaking this world, breaking God’s heart.
And in the wake of breaking light, the shards fell to the ground in tears, tears that flooded the whole world with the grief of a God whose heart was broken. God’s heart full of light was full also of grief, grieving the darkness which dwelt now in humankind.
‘The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.’ Genesis 6:6
Regret. The author mentions it twice this regret of God (verses 6 and 7), perhaps so we will pause and hear, so we will linger and feel the heaviness in God’s words this day, the heaviness in His heart.
But words can be frail vessels within which to hold a meaning. Our English word ‘regret’ doesn’t hold the author’s intentions easily. When we regret, we wish we hadn’t done something. Our mind weaves visions of mistakes, of apologies, of backtracking and changing hearts.
But God’s heart for humanity has never changed. He has only ever and only still, wants full and flourishing life for us. The life He breathed into us in a garden long ago.
This word translated ‘regret’ relates most closely in our modern culture to an accounting realisation that the ‘books’ needed auditing2, or that a balance scale had tilted too far in the wrong direction.
The great human project had veered dangerously off course. Humankind had become corrupt and violent, wallowing in mud and forgetting the Breath that brought the mud to life.
Pause and hear, linger just a moment and feel the heaviness in God’s words this day, the heaviness in His heart. The weight of His world, broken, The pain of His creation, Falling.
‘The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.’ Genesis 6:6 NIV
God’s heart, ‘deeply troubled’, could equally be translated as ‘hurt’, ‘pained’ or grieved3. Other scripture translations say “his heart was filled with sorrow”(EHV), “his heart was filled with pain” (EXB), “He was grieved in His heart” (NKJV) or “It broke his heart” NLT.
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us. How does God’s heart so full of love, so full of goodness, witness all this breaking, broken sadness that has become His children’s reality, and not break also?
It does. Break.