The Light Shines in the Darkness
2026 Lenten Reflections
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:5
During Lent, we follow the way of Christ, the Good Shepherd, who walks into dark and forgotten places — the alleys, prisons, fields, and sickbeds of the world — and brings light. This same light has shone through followers of Jesus across centuries, through tangible evangelistic love that fed the hungry and visited the lonely in the earliest Christian communities. Without wealth or status, they revealed the kingdom by showing up for “the least of these.”
Nineteen centuries later, that same light glowed in Victorian Britain through the imagination of George MacDonald — a Scottish minister, storyteller, and mentor to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In his novels, MacDonald named the brokenness of his age: hungry children, impoverished widows, forgotten workers, and those cast out by society’s fears. Through stories of redemption and kindness, he invited readers not just to see the poor but to love them — to become light-bearers themselves.
Today, the Matthew 25 Initiative continues that same compelling gospel light. As we journey through the seven weeks of Lent, we will reflect on how the church has grown throughout time by the power of the Holy Spirit through demonstrations of mercy and the proclamation of the Gospel. Christians are called to stand with those in need, tending to wounds that are physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual and stepping into discomfort, inconvenience, ugliness, and the complicated realities of life.
As a season of the Christian year, Lent calls us not only to repentance, but to reillumination — to rediscover that God’s mission is mercy and that we are bearers of His light in every dark corner of our own communities. And, often, we discover that mysteriously Christ’s light shines brightest in the darkest places among those whom God loves so dearly
Illustration by Eunice Sunmie Derksen
See artist statement below
Artist Statement
Eunice Sunmie Derksen
It is not uncommon to hate one’s own finitude—or perhaps even another’s. The inner soul voices, “If I was more self-sufficient and if you were more self-sufficient, I would not experience as much inconvenience, affliction, or setback.” The lenten season is an antidote to the attitude of self-sufficiency that suffocates love for the Other. The antidote comes with the power of remembrance; remembering that we are all creatures of God, finite and dependent on the one who gives life. In Lent, we learn to purify our vision to see our humanity as a gift from the Creator—a gift that is soaked with fragility, freedom, and dignity.
These artworks invite us to remember our own creatureliness along with the creatureliness of others, especially of those who are marginalized and vulnerable. Somehow, all of creation being a gift coexists with the groaning of creation waiting to be set free from the bondage of decay. The artworks seek to open a horizon in which the abundant grace and piercing fragility of creation come together.