A Light

Good Wednesday morning! Trying to get past the almost painful whiteness of the new G-mail compose screen. Ouch! I'll have to check into dimming that glow just a bit. That kind of makes me wonder how dim my glow might be. Has my initial flame in Christ kind of sputtered a little? How can I tell? We don't want to be like the church that became lukewarm, but how do we measure our spiritual brightness? This may not be something that I can see on my own. Can a flashlight measure its own light? Unless the light is reflected off something else, the light has no way to tell how it is doing. This may be related to the question of why we need each other. After all, wouldn't Jesus alone be sufficient? Do we need to walk with anyone else?

If I shine my light at Jesus there is no reflection; I only see His great light. Jesus does not reflect our glory; we are made to reflect His. I must shine my light out into the darkness. Once in a while, I will see my light reflected. We meet our brothers and sisters in Christ at times and then we can see a reflection of our lamps. Other times we might see a little glimmer as the Good News is received by a person lost in that darkness. We hope to point that person to the true Light of the World.

There is a lot of metaphorical stuff going on in the devotional this morning. I hope that I don't lose myself in it. As Christians we have been made clean in Christ. A lot like the new snow, we are white and cleansed by our Lord. However, the snow under the cloudy skies is much easier to look at than that same snow when the sun shines on it directly. The closer we get to Jesus, the more our light will shine. So much that the world may one day have trouble looking at us so bright will be the light of Jesus in our faces. Stephen, the first martyr, became that way just before the world stoned him. The world wants to shut out that painful Light, but let us go forth and shine!

God be with you!

Bucky