The Deep Still Shines

In the lightless depths of the ocean, where sunlight never penetrates and pressure would crush an unprotected human being, something remarkable happens: most creatures glow. Dr. Edith Widder, a marine biologist who spent decades descending into those depths in submersibles, confirmed what researchers now widely accept — bioluminescence in the deep ocean is not the exception. It is the rule. Fish, squid, jellyfish, and countless other species generate their own light, not because their environment invites it, but because light is simply what they were made to carry.

They don't wait for conditions to improve before they shine. Their bodies produce the very thing the world withholds.

The prophet Isaiah spoke to a people surrounded by exactly this kind of darkness: "Arise, shine, for your light has come" (Isaiah 60:1). He didn't say wait until things settle down. He said rise — and shine — now.

Courage, in the biblical sense, is not the absence of danger. It is the refusal to let your surroundings determine what comes out of you. The Almighty did not design those deep-sea creatures to wait for a friendlier ocean. And He did not fill you with His Spirit so that light would only appear on easy days.

You may be in a season of crushing pressure and absolute cold. But you still carry what those depths cannot extinguish. Wherever you are today — that is exactly where God has placed His light. Use it.