Meet darkness with light

By Daniel Francis

Here are two typical scenarios that I want you to envision for a moment. You have met this exceptionally beautiful woman. You find her wildly attractive, and you have begun getting to know each other. She seems like a great person, but she is very guarded. Her walls are up. They are clear as day and you’ve reached this point where it does not feel reasonable to keep trying.

You are giving her time, attention, and everything in between but she is on the defence. Your energy is not being reciprocated. She says she has been hurt in the past so why should she give you a chance? You keep trying but why stick around if you are being pushed away? Eventually you leave.

Here is the next scenario. You do not know what it is about this new co-worker but they just don’t like you. They never greet you even though you audibly greet them; they are always bad-talking you; and they find creative ways to make their work your work.

You do not know what you did to them, but you can’t stand for it. You go out of your way to make things difficult for them. Why not, right? They are making life at work difficult for you. You publicly call out their mistakes in meetings so the whole team can hear. You send passive-aggressive emails to stir up arguments and you spread gossip about them in the office. You’ve been hurt so you have to put up a wall. They hurt you so you have to hurt them back.

We hear scenarios like these all the time. They are quite common. The concept of an eye for an eye. They do for you, so you have to do for them. Or the idea that you have been hurt so that means that the next person has to pay the price for what was done to you.

These ideas are very normal in the world we live in but are not within the world that God wants us to live in. When met with darkness I am 100 per cent sure that He does not want us to meet that darkness with more darkness.

Meet darkness with light. The difficult part is acting against what the world says is the norm. The norm is to be angry and to get even. The norm is to be hurt and let everyone else in the future pay the price.

What if Jesus had met the darkness He was receiving with more darkness? We are taught to forgive. We are taught to spread the Good Word. We are taught to carry our faith with us wherever we go. That means especially in moments of anger and hurt.

So, you got hurt in your past relationship, work on healing. Keep working on being your best self. Ask God for guidance by praying about it. Show your best self in your future potential relationships and let those who are not meant to be in your life expose themselves, so you know they are not for you.

They hurt you? Don’t reciprocate. Forgive them, wish them well, and keep doing the good work that you are accustomed to doing. Do not fuel the fire of aggression by adding more fire to it. Confuse them by taking the air out of the situation and giving it no fuel.

This is not only a practice but a lifestyle. It goes against what we see out there. It will be hard, but do you want to encourage a world of darkness by feeding into the darkness around you?

God wants us to be beacons of light and goodness. The petty squabbles are where we show who we are. It is in those moments where we must call on God to remind us of our faith and who He wants us to be.

Let those of the world be of the world but let those of faith be of faith. Hard to do, yes. But worth it in the end, definitely.

Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.

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