It is too big for me, too heavy. It shoves me and knocks me—bruises and wounds me. I cannot defend. My limbs are too weak. I press back and wrench against the Thing, but I cannot discern its form exactly. I feel its power and the texture of its hatred. Scales, immense, grate against my soul. This Thing is too big to fight.

Again! The impact of failure. Contusions. Trauma. My will has wilted, and I’m limp. I tumble helter-skelter through darkness, a puppet, while I pass one speck of light, bouncing in my confusing space. The dot, intense, a white laser, seems not so distant, and something desperate inside me reaches. The tip of my soul’s finger, one scant sense of “me” touches the light, even as I brace for more blows.

Is the light—growing?

The behemoth, the dragon, the “Thing” is whirling away through the dusk as my speck of light glows—a beam circling, spiraling, sucking the blackness inside it, and I wonder at the comfort I feel. The light is under me now, around me now, and shock! It’s coursing through my chest like healing flame, consuming my fears, roaring in my ears—not just illumination, but a Voice that I can see.

I look for the Big Thing, but it’s gone. The Light bears me up and I wonder that the pain I felt—I no longer feel. I had no strength to beg or debate the Light into my dark space. He just came when I reached for Him.

I might call my new comfort: love, or joy, or peace—but Light describes Him best. He has overwhelmed my darkness, displaced it with himself, and swallowed the Big Thing that battered me for so long.

In Him [Jesus] I live and move and have my being. (Acts 17:28)