Bringing Down the Lights. . .

One of my fondest memories of High School is going to dances. I loved being with my friends, hearing all of my favorite songs, the lights, dancing and just relaxing. I still love to dance, although I have come far from the whole 80’s rocking two-step. It is one of my husband’s top choices and mine when we happen to get a night out together. Being married to a wonderful man whose hobby for the last 15 years has been DJing means that I get a critique of what is going well and what could be improved each time we go out dancing. Since our marriage 5 years ago I have learned that there is much more to being a good Disc Jockey than tossing a few songs on the cd player and plugging in some fancy lights. One of the most challenging things to perfect, and is a sure way to identify an amateur from a professional, is lowering the houselights in the room. Bringing the houselights down requires subtlety, patience and if done well isn’t even noticed by the crowd. I have been pondering the implications of this. We are told in the scriptures that we each bring a light to the earth, the Light of Christ. “I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” (D&C 93:2.) the Savior said.



As young children we learned how to keep darkness away by turning on a light. My own boys don’t want to go to sleep without their “night light” on in the hallway until they fall asleep. I remember being a teenager at home alone and turning on every light in the house! I realized that the instinctual physical law is also a spiritual law: light and darkness cannot occupy the same space at the same time.





“Light dispels darkness. When light is present, darkness is vanquished and must depart. More importantly, darkness cannot conquer light unless the light is diminished or departs. When the spiritual light of the Holy Ghost is present, the darkness of Satan departs. Beloved young men and young women of the Church, we are engaged in a battle between the forces of light and darkness. If it were not for the Light of Jesus Christ and His gospel, we would be doomed to the destruction of darkness. But the Savior said, “I am come a light into the world.” John 12:46. “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” John 8:12” (Robert D. Hales, “Out of Darkness into His Marvelous Light,” Ensign, May 2002, 69)





Satan works on us like a Good DJ in lowering our lights. He has had millions of years to perfect his methods. We can be entrenched in darkness before we even notice or realize that there is any dimming of our light at all. I know this because I have been entrenched in a deep depression for three and a half years. Now the depression itself was due to a hormonal imbalance but the additional darkness I was plunged into was very scary and very real. In addition to the depression I found myself letting the essentials of the gospel fall by the wayside. Studying my scriptures regularly was one of the first things to go, then praying became more haphazard, and so on. I never realized how much of my personal darkness was simply a lack of the spirit in my life. I blamed everything on my depression and the lack of understanding on the part of others. As the depression began to lift (much as walking off the dance floor and into the hall) I began to recognize that I had been in the dark.





The Lord is our light and, literally, our salvation. (Psalms 27:1) Like the sacred fire that encircled the children in 3 Nephi:16; His light will form a protective shield between you and the darkness of the adversary as you live worthy of it. You need that light. We need that light. As we study the scriptures, the teachings of the prophets, pray, and learn of Christ we can by obedience to wise counsel, learn to claim the protective light of the gospel as our own. There is only one way to claim this protective light we “must learn to generate that light each day by believing on Jesus Christ and following His commandments.” By our diligence and obedience we will keep so much light inside of us and in our daily lives that Satan will have no opportunities to fill us with darkness.