After Darkness Comes The Light (A Poem on Suffering & Salvation)

A world in sin with mournful groans,

We need a Savior to redeem,

The blood of bulls cannot atone,

All hope is lost, or so it seems.

Yet God’s plan is to condescend,

Into the most unlikely place,

A child is born in Bethlehem,

And He will pay for Adam’s race.

For centuries we needed Him,

A substitute to win our fight,

The sting of death would do us in,

But after Darkness comes the Light.

 

Born depraved, no hope to see;

Blindly groping for a way;

Yet content with thoughts of me;

We want the Lord to stay away.

Darkness ever choking out,

Any spark of the Divine,

Dead within and dead without;

Pursuing sin, that shall be mine.

Then comes the Spirit, with the Word;

Born again, with such delight!

Sovereign grace, that’s from the Lord,

And after Darkness comes the Light.

 

And so begins the narrow road,

With joy and pain now intermixed.

Some days feel like a heavy load.

Yet through it all our hope is fixed.

Upon the One who conquered sin,

Because of Him we persevere,

And one day soon, we’ll enter in;

Till then, our laughter’s mixed with tears.

Testing for the godly one,

Yet only for a season might,

Make us crawl instead of run,

But after Darkness, comes the Light.

 

Then He ordains the ending trial,

That every Christian’s bound to face.

We all must walk the final mile.

We all must finish up the race.

Again it feels like darkness grim,

As flesh and bone give way to pain,

But now we have the strength from Him,

What seems like loss, in fact is gain.

And for the final time we leave,

The darkness of that closing night,

Into the splendor, we’re received,

And after Darkness, comes the Light!

Comments

[Shane Kastler]

P.S. - The four stanzas of this poem describe darkness in four different ways: the darkness of the fall of man; the darkness of personal spiritual lostness; the darkness of daily trials; and the darkness of physical death. Followed by the "light" that God graciously provides his people.