Keeping Going While There is Still Light

When I was a boy, my brother and I would be sent to do a project for Dad outside. When were we done? We were done when the job was done or if it was a long-term project, when it was dark. While there was light, we kept working.

There is something in this for right now in my life, just now, in America as it is. This is not the only bad time in world history, I doubt it would make the top one thousand, but it is a bad time in the history of our democracy. We love crooks and demagogues and that is not even to start on our politicians.

Another democracy had fallen into moral confusion to the point that they condemned their best man to death for corrupting the youth. He wasn’t part of the educational culture that revolved around sexual confusion and propaganda for the establishment.

This teacher wasn’t in it to grow his school, build a sports program in his sports crazed city, and he wasn’t politically correct. This irritated too many powerful people and so the city voted to kill Socrates and it was not even very close.

The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of devils.

Being the man he was, Socrates spent his last day before execution discussing ideas. Having taught his friends, he taught them to the end making them pure and teaching them to love the light.

At one point he turns to a student and says: “Well . . .call me to help you and I will be your Iolaus while there is still light.” Iolaus was the side kick of Heracles. The teacher was putting himself in the role of helper and leaving the hero’s job to his student. When the sun went down that day, Socrates would have to drink poison and die.

But he was there to help while there was still light.

When it is dark, we can stop working and go home to Dad.

This cheers me up because it is still light. We are still able to seek truth, question authority, and love God. Nobody is yet able to keep us from pursuing wisdom, virtue, and joy. If we want to educate with integrity, there is still no law that forbids it.

It is still light.

Jesus said: We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

Work doesn’t last forever. The day of rest is coming and Father is waiting to welcome us home, but not quite yet. It is light and we can work, thanks be to God.