Advent devotion: Lanterns

Life is a long and tedious process. It is full of ups and downs. There is a lot of good and some bad. We all have some things to push through. I think it is what makes us who we are.

For me there has been a couple of things that were really hard. I lost my step-mother, Sarah, in 2016. She was very important to me and I loved her dearly. Just months before, I lost my great-grandfather Lester. He was the one who really raised me. My mom worked a lot and my dad did too because they had already split up at that time. Overall 2016 was by far the hardest and worst for me and my family.

I like to think of all the people who help me, or who are just good people, as lanterns. They are the light in the world. I would love to see a map of that because there is so much good in the world. I am a younger person at the age of 17 and I don’t regularly watch the news, but when I do it’s just full of all the bad stuff. I hate the news so much because only in certain segments do they show the good stuff or the light in the darkness in the world. I love when Pastor Marty talks about how the church or the people in it act as the light in a very dark world.

So, as we go through these long lives we get to be a part of, I think we should all strive to be lights in this world. In the first book of John, chapters one through five, it talks a lot about how God is our light. I think God was truly the first lantern, or the lighter that lit the lamp of Jesus, which then spread like a fire throughout time.

Will Behrens is a junior at Bettendorf High School. He enjoys most sports, including football and basketball. He is also very active in the church, attending youth group on Sunday night and helping out at 678 or during the learning hour on Sundays.