You Light Up My Life

When the song You Light Up My Life topped the charts for a then record-making ten weeks back in 1977, songwriter Joe Brooks and singer Debby Boone seemed headed for musical immortality. Debby is still somewhere near there, but Grammy- and Oscar-winning Joe Brooks fell short by taking his own life in a New York City apartment on Sunday. Awaiting trial for numerous counts of rape, the 73-year old Brooks left a suicide note, put a plastic bag over his head and piped in helium. He was found by a friend with whom he was to have lunch. Brooks’ son is also facing murder charges in an unrelated case.

When Debby Boone appeared at a National Religious Broadcasters convention years ago, she said that when she sang You Light Up My Life in reality she was singing of the real light of her life, Jesus Christ. Joe Brooks evidently wrote of someone else and never made Debby’s connection to the source of Light.

It is always a matter of pain when hearing of anyone’s self-destruction, especially when this need not be. Joe Brooks needed what Debby Boone found—the One who declared in John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” That is a vibrant New Testament theme reflecting the description of the deaths of both Abraham and his son Isaac who died “full of years” and “full of days” (Gen. 25:8 and 35:29 respectively). “Full” means “satisfied” or “pleasantly satiated.”

Years ago, I heard of a Christian man whose passing was described as “dying full of life.” An elderly gentleman said of his own life, “All this and heaven too.” Another declared, “If I live, I get my pension, and if I die, I go to be with Jesus. No matter what, I win.”

Christ does light up the lives of those who trust Him for forgiveness and the new birth. He is “the true Light, which gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:9). John 1:4-5 outlines, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” For those who do grasp His meaning, Christ promised, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Joe Brooks couldn’t face his crimes and falsely thought a suicide escape would bring relief. But life’s existence does not terminate with physical death. Christ’s salvation could have brought a precious relief from all that guilt and a new birth valid for all eternity. It is that message that believers have to share with a benighted world.

Christ said, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). Since He has ascended to Heaven, we believers are lights as Paul declared in Philippians 2:15-16: “[T]hat ye may become blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life…”

Hopefully, many once-born people walking in spiritual darkness will say of Christ and of us, His representatives,

“You light up my life, You give me hope To carry on. You light up my days And fill my nights with song.”

Dave Virkler