The Lord is My Light and My Salvation.

Theo, who's four, will not go to sleep in the dark.

Not the big light, he doesn't want that either, but there has to be something.

A lamp left on out on the landing, the door open a few inches. If the house goes properly dark, he calls out.

For a while I tried to reason him out of it. It's the same room it was five minutes ago. Your books are on the shelf, your doggy is next to you, everything exactly where you left it.

And all of that is true. Nothing in that room changes when the light goes off.

The only thing that changes is that he can't see it anymore. So we leave the light on.

When I hit a dark stretch, nothing in my life has actually changed either.

God is still who He was last week. The promises He made are still the promises.

What's changed is that I can't see any of it.

The dark doesn't take the truth away, it just hides it from me for a while, and then I panic as though it were gone.

When Theo calls out, though, he isn't asking for the lamp. He could reach the lamp.

He's asking for us. What he wants to know is that somebody who loves him is awake in the house and close enough to hear him.

Theo will grow out of the lamp on the landing. But, nobody grows out of what it's for. We just build bigger versions and put them on cliffs.

Lighthouses guide ships through dangerous water in the dark. They don't calm the sea or remove the rocks.

They hold one steady point of reference so sailors can navigate water they can't fully see.

But a lighthouse can only ever do half the job. It is bolted to the cliff. It can warn you off the rocks, but it cannot come out and get you. No lighthouse ever launched a boat.

David doesn't settle for half. In Psalm 27, he doesn't write that the Lord gives him light, or sends him light, or shows him the way.

He writes, "The Lord is my light and my salvation." Both. The steady point on the cliff, and the One who comes out into the water after you.

And look what that answers. "Whom shall I fear?" David doesn't talk himself out of the fear the way I tried to talk Theo out of his.

He doesn't argue that the dark isn't dark. He names who is in it with him, and the fear has nowhere left to stand.

So if today feels dark, you are not being asked to find the switch yourself, or to pretend you can see the room.

You're allowed to do what a frightened child does, which is call out into the dark and trust that Someone who loves you is awake and close enough to hear.

He is your light. He is also your salvation. He does not go out, and He will not leave you calling into an empty house.