Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world.’
– John 8:12
Our newborn son was very ill.
Kevin lay in a sterile room fighting pneumonia. He was just three weeks old; so tiny, so new on this earth, already having to fight for life. I stayed with him as long as I could, unable to hold him, watching his efforts to breathe as I broke into little pieces.
The doctor was hopeful, though. Kevin would recover, unless there was some undiscovered birth defect affecting his little body. My mother’s heart melted in the face of the unknown. I felt so very helpless.
Finally, I needed to leave him and get back to our other two children. Reluctantly, I left the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit with a heavy heart and climbed into the car for the hard drive home. A spring storm darkened the skies, adding to my gloom. How I hated returning to that empty crib!
This trial was the first challenge to my faith since my recent conversion to Christ. I wanted to trust the Savior, but I was consumed with fear. I was still dealing with lingering doubts about His existence.
As I turned onto the main highway heading out of town, the clouds parted behind me. The sun hit the squall ahead of me and a glorious rainbow arched across the sky. At that moment, something alien washed over me. I was bathed in a powerful and golden sense of the presence of God as understanding flooded my soul. In that moment I knew these three truths:
God is real.
Everything will be okay, whether Kevin lived or died. God assured me Kevin was safe with Him, whether in life or in death.
This is why the Holy Spirit is called The Comforter.
I cried all the way home. That day God radically invaded my comfort zone to reach me, filling me with the knowledge that He is not a concept, a principle, or a force. He is a sovereign being, and He wants to reveal Himself to mankind. Kevin quickly responded to treatment and was soon discharged from the hospital. But my journey in learning about the God to Whom I committed my life had only just begun.
Only much later could I appreciate the fullness of that moment with the rainbow and what God wanted me to see.
In science, a prism is a transparent object that breaks white light into its spectrum of colors. Light is made up of all the wavelengths we perceive as colors, but our eyes can’t see them until the light is broken. The rainbow we see after a rain is the result of the refraction of sunlight by water.
Hence the physical illustration of a spiritual phenomenon.
God is light, the source of all life and all power. Because we are limited beings, we can’t comprehend Him, necessitating the incarnation of the Word into flesh. Christ’s coming and sacrifice broke the holy light of God into the many facets of His divine nature for us to see.
We often rage at God for the heartache He allows in our lives. We resist the tears. We beg Him to remove the source of brokenness that could be the very place where God is revealed in all His beauty. Don’t despise the grief. He can use our heartaches to pull back the veil on the holy place to find a multicolored cloak of grace.
Your tears are His prism, the place where God’s light is broken to display His beauty in your life.
Believe this and trust Him. Praise Him in the storm. Listen for the holy whisper in the rain:
God is real.
You will be okay.
This is why the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter.
