Two sources of light

Sunset over Westward Ho! - my photo

Do you know what day it is today?

The Feast of the Transfiguration. Long ago, four Jewish men climbed a lonely mountain and one of them – the Rabbi, the leader – was transformed into something else. His face shone like the sun and his clothes became ‘as white as the light’ (Matthew 17: 2, NIV), as dazzling as a lightning flash. And the lives of Peter, James and John were transformed forever.

6th August is also the anniversary of the first atomic bombing. One of my favourite writers, JRR Tolkien, responded to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with deep horror and foreboding. I don’t know what other kind of reaction is possible. The human race had harnessed the terrible power of the sun in a malevolent way never willed by the sun’s Maker.

On this day, I invite us all to ponder these two very different sources of light. One was celestial, glorious, life-giving, opening up a portal to heaven on earth. The other was dark and demonic, opening up a gateway to death and despair on an unimaginable scale.

As Christian writers, we obviously want our writing to be a force for good. That doesn’t mean we have to write overtly Christian fiction (if that’s the area we write in). Neither does it mean we can’t tackle dark, gritty themes. The stories of the Bible contain plenty of human dirt and grit. Indeed, some Bible stories are highly disturbing – yet the biblical writers treat such accounts of evil with restraint.

I took the above photo in North Devon about three weeks ago. Westward Ho! is a glorious stretch of golden sand, divided from the equally glorious Saunton Sands by a double estuary, where the Rivers Taw and Torridge meet. As I walked along the beach, I watched the sun set in a bank of grey cloud. The light shifted from deep gold to soft rose. The calm waves became shimmering bands of light, mirroring the sky in bronze and pink.

Let us all look into the light and see and feel that light spreading within us. A gentle light, a pure light, blessed by eternity, a source of healing and hope, shining down upon us and through us … so that even in some small way our writing can becomes a channel, an estuary, of the light of life itself.

Or, rather, Himself.


I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live. Deuteronomy 30:19

I’m an Anglican lay minister and Administrator for the education and learning department of the United Reformed Church. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.