Truly the Light Is Sweet – August 26, 1956
There is in Ecclesiastes, a significant short sentence that suggests a subject; “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.”1 “Truly the light is sweet” — and if one need any convincing of it, he need only wrestle with problems, with worries, in the doubt and discouragement that sometimes come with darkness. “Truly the light is sweet” — and one lesson we all have to learn is to wait at times for the light — to wait for the light in making decisions, to wait for the light in appraising the seriousness of symptoms, to wait for the light in assessing any situation — for darkness can and does distort.
All people have their problems and perhaps almost all people have periods of despondency of spirit when the weight and the worry seem almost more than they can carry. And usually, the same problems seem heavier in darkness than they do in daylight.
In darkness, problems have a way of becoming confused. In darkness symptoms have a way of magnifying themselves. In darkness our judgment may be distorted in many matters. When our loved ones — our children — are overdue at night, the things we sometimes think could have occurred, can cause acute mental and emotional distress.
Darkness quickens morbid imaginings and sometimes makes unsolved problems seem unsolvable. Nighttime has its place. It has its own kind of quiet, its covering quality, its time for sleep and for the renewing of energies for the next day. But when worries become intermixed with ” the dark imaginings of night, sleep leaves, and so does peace; and so sometimes does faith — and anguish enters in.
Whatever else its uses, whatever else can be said for the darkness of night, decisions should not be dictated by darkness. And in times of sorrow, in times of despair and despondency, we should hold on in faith, from hour to hour, if need be, and wait for the light to return— and make no commitments in the distortion of darkness. “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.”
Both in the confidence of youth, and in the caution and discouragement of more maturity, light must be an element in all safe thinking, in all safe decisions.
1Ecclesiastes 11:7.
August 26, 1956
Broadcast Number 1,410