Light in the Dark

Just over a year ago I got a craving to do something. I wanted to shed all modern comfort. I wanted to go somewhere where I would encounter the most godless people and situations. Somewhere were the rain beats the earth into an uninhabitable state. Somewhere that would truly test my ability to cope with the conditions.

As such I went to Oxegen music festival.

I absolutely loved Oxegen. I am returning this year and can't wait for it. However it would be fair to say, it's a good thing Summer Madness is right before it because you certainly jump into a sinful place! Don't get me wrong, the rumours of violence and danger are totally untrue, it's a very friendly place, but you are constantly surrounded by drinking, drug use and sexual promiscuity from the moment you enter the grounds to the moment you leave. And yet there was a moment in that weekend that will stick with me to my dying day.

On the Sunday night Sproule and I went to see Mumford & Sons. We had seen about twenty bands over the weekend, we were tired, unwashed and while it's not the way it should be, we had become climatized to the sin around us. Mumford & Sons were the last band we would see that weekend and it was a truly incredible gig. Then they started to play a song off their album called Awake My Soul, and it was a very unusual experience. To anyone who doesn't know the track, it canters along in their lovely folk style, and then finishes with a stomping chant. And at that point in the song 8,000 people packed inside a massive tent all raised their hands and sang in unison 'Awake my soul, for you were made to meet your maker.' Most of the band's lyrics come with spiritual undertones and as I understand it Marcus Mumford is indeed a Christian, but it was a strange moment to see so many people who were living in such an ungodly way sing such godly lyrics. Obviously the words were not sung by the people in any kind of worshipful sense, but it stuck with me as a reminder that God's light not only breaks into dark situations, but in fact that is where it is the most noticable.

I have mentioned to many people that I have attended or am attending Oxegen and their response, while never condemning or judgemental, is that they wouldn't go to a music festival because a lot of what goes on there contrasts with their spiritual views. Fair enough. I don't go to clubs for that reason (and the fact that the music is the worst thing about the world). But how often do I pray God's light into clubs? How often do people pray for the people who go to a music festival to drink themselves stupid or take substances to help them forget about the rest of their lives? We can all list places in Belfast (or wherever we live) that we wouldn't like to walk through on a dark night but how often do we pray for them? There is so much that Christians can readily identify as not of God, but we never seem to want to change that. Maybe it's because we forget that God's power is greater than our own and He can change what we can't. Or maybe we automatically assume that if we don't want anything to do with it neither does God.

But these aren't the truth.

The truth is that God wants the whole world to be His. One day every tongue will confess You are God, one day every knee will bow. We sing these words, we should also mean them. We shouldn't just be praying for and reaching out to the contemplative people who we occassionally chat to about our faith, but also those who live every day of their lives directly in opposition to us.

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

John 3:17

In a world that offers so much evil and glorifies a person's right to do what they like, it's hard to believe that the situation can really be made right, but we have to believe that the slightest touch of God on a life, whether it's a discussion that arises in the workplace, or song lyrics sung to a huge crowd some rainy evening in Ireland, can radically change a situation.