A Light In The Darkness

Written By Mary Naber, Loving the Wise Executive Director

“You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness… He died for us so that… we may live together with Him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” -1 Thessalonians 5: 5, 10-11

“Shawshank Redemption” is one movie that seems to make almost everyone’s Top 10 List.

In this film, Andy is a successful lawyer who is framed and unjustly sent to Shawshank Penitentiary. Instead of becoming despondent, Andy generously invests in the prisoners around him, ultimately bringing them profound friendship, beauty, and peace.

Shawshank Redemption

In one of the most powerful scenes, Andy locks himself in the warden’s office to play them a record of a Mozart’s opera over the loudspeaker. The camera pans over the courtyard as the inmates all stop in awe, experiencing the soaring freedom in their hearts of “something greater” than the otherwise drab gray of their daily life.

For a moment while watching the movie in 1994, I wanted to be Andy. I wanted to bring light and beauty to darkness. But I never imagined myself in jail!

And yet there I found myself, in the late 90s, visiting drab gray senior homes where its residents also find themselves imprisoned, unable to get out on their own. Like those incarcerated in the film, the elderly may also be found sitting expressionless, with sad vacant eyes, and no hope for tomorrow.

Until we play them a once familiar hymn off Spotify over the mini Bose or JDZ speaker. Amazing Grace. Jesus Loves Me. And the drab environment of gray is suddenly infused with the glorious light of His Holy Spirit, and we get to witness the same pause, moment of awe, and transformation of countenance, as our sweet seniors experience the soaring freedom in their hearts of “something greater” Who is Jesus our Lord.

Like Andy, we get to bless our community with a transcendent moment of peace.

But more than Andy—in song and scripture’s reminders of Jesus’ gift of salvation on the cross—we also get to bring hope for tomorrow.

While society expects our population in senior homes to “get busy dying” we joyfully remind them that God’s purpose for them is to “get busy living” in His love and light and fullness and beauty, in our last days and for eternity.

Come join us!

“I am the light of the world.” –Jesus, John 8:12