What Will You Do with The Light?
God, in His mercy, gave us light. 1 John 1:5 says, “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.” It should not be wondered at that the first thing God did on the morn of creation was to create light and separate it from darkness. The difference between light and darkness is something we all understand. Small children will quickly ask you to leave the light on or to crack the door open so their room does not get swallowed by the darkness. Instinctively, we feel safer in the light. The dark consists of unknowns and hidden dangers. It is in the light that we flourish. It is in the light that we grow and are strengthened. All these things ring true whether we are talking about rays of sunshine or the glow of our Heavenly Father.
As Jesus stood rebuking a crowd for demanding signs and then rejecting the miracles of his hands, he pauses to instruct us on what to do with the message he was delivering. Anyone can hear, but few accept. A few years ago, I had a dog who was injured when he was just a puppy. The injury resulted in the loss of sight in one eye and damage to the other. As he aged, this injury affected his personality. His limited vision made him afraid. He became lost easily and was unable to navigate changes in his surroundings. How many of us are wandering around in the shadows because, like my dog, our eyes have been damaged. Verse 34 from today’s reading tells us, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.”
God shines His light all around us. We are engulfed in His love and mercy, but do we perceive it? Can we take it in? Just as an eye takes in the light to manipulate it into vision, our soul receives the gospel and either accepts, rejects it, or pushes it aside. It sounds so ridiculous that someone would light a lamp and then hide it under a basket or put it in a box under their bed, yet each of us must decide what we are going to do with the light of God. If we set it on the shelf and allow its light to be seen, it changes everything. Light cuts through the darkness. It reveals the truth of the shadows. The gospel will change everything it touches. Our decision is not how much light God brings into our life but what we will do with it. Will we make ourselves a mirror to shine that light into the dark corners of our world, or will we act as a diffusor, attempting to soften the truth so as to not offend the darkness?
(Written by Keegan Harkins.)
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