Shine

 you ever tried walking in the dark? Maybe you get up late at night and since you don’t want to wake your spouse you leave the lights out. You make your way into the kitchen by feel and memory. You walk cautiously, slowly.

Then you flip on the light. Everything is illuminated. You have your bearings. You have your confidence back. It’s a relief.

How many of us feel like we’re walking around in the dark? Maybe it’s just blurry, kind of a cloud. We have a form of existential angst that keeps our eyes shut. Then we encounter a light. An ah-ha moment or some breakthrough. Everything starts to make sense again.

In the faith, we know what that illumination is. It’s the Spirit of God enlightening our life. It’s the God of lights shining down from above. It’s Jesus, the divine presence we practice.

Here’s something, though. Read these two verses and tell me what you see.

“I am the light of the world.”

John 18:12

“You are the light of the world.”

Matthew 5:14

Wait a minute. Which is it? Is Jesus the light of the world, or are we? Are we both somehow the light of the world, simultaneously? How would that even work?

I’m not going to spend a great deal of time here splitting theological hairs. But I do think it’s important to think through this. It’s not that we and Jesus are both the light of the world, our work completely independent of each other. And although it’s true that we reflect his light to the world, like the moon reflects the sun’s, wouldn’t the world rather have the direct light of Jesus?

I think there’s something more to be said here. When we have the light of Jesus within us, we radiate that to others. They can see Jesus when they see us. And he goes on to tell us exactly how that’s accomplished.

“In the same way let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven”

Matthew 5:16

They see our good deeds. Not our good works. Not our own efforts to keep our noses clean. But how we go about living day-to-day with the light of the world fully alive within us.

Jesus, as the light of the world, was not about moral realignment. He’s not about making us perfect examples of how to do this thing the right way. He was about how we impact others through simple love.

When we only think of it in terms of doing things right, then our message gets reduced to “Jesus loves you, so stop doing bad stuff.” Instead, he’s much more concerned with our presence in the world. That’s because he was all about his own presence in the world.

1. A.W. Tozer talked about this, and I’m going to change it up just a little bit. “God’s presence, not my obedience, is the central fact of Christianity.” In other words, whether I can cross every “t” and dot every “I” means little if I’m not living out the very presence of God in love to my neighbor. And we can be sure of that, because that’s how Jesus loved his neighbor.

He came to a world who desperately needed him. But not as judge, jury, and executionary. But as neighbor and friend. Faithfully present. And he wants us to follow that same pattern. God with us, us with others. That’s how we become the light of the world.

You are the light as you live your life in the everyday routine, living in such a way that your life reveals the presence of God. Let’s take one more look at that key verse, this time from one of my favorite translations, the Message.

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”

How are you bringing out the colors of God, the light of the world, who is already there?