Apprehended by both arms and quickly maneuvered through the door, I was tossed inside. The door was slammed in my face, then locked from the outside. It was as dark as midnight in that large room. It smelled of grain, of dust, of rodents and rodent traps. I could see nothing in the blackness.
The good news is that my landing was soft. I was sitting in the corn crib on croker sacks of feed-corn, nutrition pellets, and oats. It was cooler inside the room that outside. The scent of the grains was more comforting to me than my abductors likely supposed. I love the smell of barns, of hay, of feed, and even of manure in small doses.
My eyes did at last adjust. I saw that the room was not so dark as I had feared. Pin-thin spars of bright summer sunlight came into the space, making a complex chiaroscuro of pixey-stick illuminations against the dark, fermenting air. Light also came through narrow cracks in the walls. The board and batten was not so “airtight” as the builders probably assumed.
It remained dark in that place, but there was enough light to make out the contents of the room. I made out the sacks of grain, an old, never-used saddle hanging by a rope from a rafter, and a copse of long-handled tools took up one corner. I noticed the blackboard next to the door. It had chalk scribblings on it. This was likely an attempt to be systematic about feeding livestock.
I was less concerned about the rats I heard scratching around over my head and in the walls behind me than about the creatures that might be looking for the rats. I was not particularly afraid of rat snakes, bull snakes, or corn snakes, but it was not unheard of in that place and season that water moccasins, copperheads, or even rattlers would make their way into the barn and crib area, looking for dinner. The previous summer, a rattlesnake had been dispatched near the corn crib. It was hiding among the stacked hay bales and could have hurt someone. I was told this story not long before I was locked in the corn crib.
The sunbeams shining into the dark room were beautiful. I sat there as quiet as I could be. I did not want to give my abductors any satisfaction. They expected me to get upset and perhaps panic and cry out. That is just what I was not going to do. But my heart was not in any way still. I was frankly afraid that I would not see the snake that struck me, or perhaps a rat would attack from a dark space.
After what seemed like a very long time, I did yell out, “Okay, fellows! I’m ready to come out of here and go ride horses.” I waited another ten minutes or more. Then I heard steps, and the racket associated with pieces of the lock mechanism, then impish laughter, and the big wooden door swung wide open. I was now truly blinded by the sunlight rushing into the room. I put my forearm over my eyes. When my eyes had adjusted to the brightness, I jumped out of the crib and went chasing the slower of the two abductors, hoping to get in a lick or at least throw a rock.
The two boys, my beloved first cousins, could not run too well for their laughing at their prank. We played such tricks on each other pretty much constantly during the summers I would spend on my mother’s family’s farm in Mississippi. Since this was my cousins’ domain and I was the “city boy,” I was proud of myself that day for not getting upset about being locked in a dark room where venomous snakes waited to bite me and kill me dead. Or so I thought. We boys were about 10 years old that summer. And this was an unforgettable episode in the typical day of the farm boys.
Many years later, I was preparing to preach a Christmas sermon. The readings included the following line from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (1:1). As I wondered how I might approach the exposition of this text, I remembered the utter darkness of the corn crib and the way my eyes needed to adjust to the wee bits of light coming into the black, aromatic space. And I remembered the way I was again blinded by the bright sunlight when my cousins threw the door open again.
I used the metaphor naturally presented to my imagination to open the text in a certain way. I suggested to the congregation that the light and truth given to Israel and to the world through the words and examples of the prophets was indeed light to enlighten the darkness given by the living and true God. There was light in nature; human reason provides a certain degree of very poor light: but through his Word the one God provided plenty of light to the human race across centuries and millennia, and we gained a rare and sacred light from the prophets, a revelation preeminent and priceless. I compared this light to the shafts of sunshine coming into the dark corn crib of the world: By this light, Israel and the world could see quite well.
But this light was not all the light there was. In the fulness of time, God threw the door of the world wide open and the Light of Christ rushed into the darkness. The Light was so bright — in fact it was a blinding Light — that the former lights seemed weaker in comparison. The world was virtually blinded by this Light by which we see all light: the Word made flesh, the stupendous, supreme, and final Revelation of God. Two thousand years later, the eyes of the Church are still adjusting to this Light. We do not yet see as we ought. May God give us the grace to see the Good News that is Christ Jesus, and to act on it.
