Title: The True Light
Scripture: John 1:4-13
Speaker: Ben Beasley, BenB@cckc.church

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

> Only Jesus can overcome the darkness in you and around you.

“The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.”
- Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

> Jesus overcomes the darkness when we walk as children of the light.

“There are those to whom the state is a given, the church is a given, Western culture a given, war a given, consumerism a given, paying taxes a given. All the neat slots of existence into which one fits, birth to death and every point in between. Nothing to be created, no one to be responsible to, nothing to risk, no objections to lodge. Life is a mechanical horizontal sidewalk, of the kind you sometimes ride at airports between buildings. One is carried along, a zonked spectator…”
- Daniel Berrigan, (The Nightmare of God: The Book of Revelation)

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr