While studying English with a focus in creative writing at California State Long Beach, a seed was planted in my heart to cultivate a creative platform where the light of the Lord could be illuminated within Scripture-inspired creative literature, namely within the art of poetry. This all started when I began to walking through the Gospel of John for the first time, ( a profound book in the Bible drenched with significant text of light and darkness ) while I was studying the contemporary poets of America.

In class, I was continuously fascinated by how often the symbol of light was portrayed in poems grappling with the darkness of humanity. Every day, I sat there stunned as I listened to the internal groans and seeking of poets who coped with a broken world in need of Jesus, realized or not, often evident in the lack of light that trickled between the lines — and then in other poems, in various ways, it became so clear that God’s character was revealed through the presence of light, whether it be explicitly or metaphorically represented; simply put, an epiphany struck me.

I have always been amazed with the powerful essence of light in the Bible. How Jesus Christ is both the true “light of the world” ( John 8:12) and then describes us as diligent lights who shine in reflection of Him ( Matthew 5:16). This relationship, as we see, is intimately two-fold, for to become a “vessel of light” we are first filled with the flame of the Holy Spirit, a miracle igniting at belief and forever burning in faith. Hence, the inspiration of this literary lighthouse derives itself from the Biblical significance of a clay crafted vessel, which represents our earthly bodies intricately molded from dust, and the eternal fire burning inside of us, which represents the glorious gleam of Christ’s salvation glowing within to then actively radiate out into this world.

In that same light, the more I read both creative literature alongside Scripture and wrote poetry of my own, the more I started to see poems as “little vessels of light” of their own, with the ability to carry, within the literary community and beyond, the flame of hope into a shadowed world. As an artist and poet, I longed to share the scintillating connection made between the everlasting Word and literary works that point to the true Light, and desired to create a platform where this mission could be contemplated deeply and celebrated creatively by all people.

As my time finishing my Bachelors degree came to a close, dissecting the Biblical weight of dark and light in literature continued to interest me so deeply that it led me to write my final research paper on this very topic. Essentially, this essay explores the way light as a deep symbol can move throughout the “body of a poem” to reflect the reality of the eternal light of Christ residing in the “body of our lives”: