This is a sonnet based on 1John 1:5-10 which reads

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

There is no darkness in God—only light
Who shines truth in every place, does not deceive,
Is veiled in glory, in burning brilliant white —
This is the Word we received, hear and believe.
But in fear our hearts neither rightly move or stand;
Deceit blinds our eyes we pose and pretend
That we ourselves in act and success have spanned
The gulf of our guilt and make reality bend.
Locked in shame, anger turns on me to bite
With wounding resentments, embittered, locked in lies,
Cut off from your creatures, myself, and the Light
In the drowning dark of bitterness this sinner finally dies.
But in confession’s light, I am lifted from the flood,
Am cleansed, restored, forgiven by the Son’s most precious blood.

(c) Randy Edwards
artwork: The Vision of the Lamb in the Midst of the Four Living Creatures and the Twenty-Four Elders; London, England; c1255-1260. From The J Paul Getty Museum