(August 11, 2013)
“We are a holy nation, set apart for You. We are take Your light to every nation, tongue and tribe, so they may see your glory shining through our lives.
“You have called us out of darkness, out of darkness into Your marvellous light. You have saved us from the darkness, we rejoice in Your power and might.”
We sang this song this morning in our church. As usual, it was met with good response. But between the morning sound check and final run-through and the actual service when we sang, I was running images of “Your light” through my brain, trying to comprehend what that really means.
Then it hit me.
My older brother once told me a story about how he and his brothers-in-law, on his wife’s side, once spent a week at deer camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during a time of year when there was a new moon: in other words, the time of month when there is no reflection of the sun off the lunar surface at all.
My brother told me it got so dark that he could hold his hand in front of his face and not see anything until someone would light a match or turn on a flashlight or a lantern.
My mind also conjured up the image of someone — me, perhaps — walking through the house following a power outage. These days, when I wake up in the middle of night night, I can see the LED alarm clock next to my bed, the reflection of the night light in the bathroom and even the flashing lights of the wireless modem down the hall in the living room. That all goes away, of course, when the power goes out.
Then I got to thinking of walking through the house with a flashlight. Our natural instinct is to shine the light on the floor or just a few feet ahead to see where we’re going. I have learned, however, that shining the flashlight on the ceiling brightens up our path a lot better than the other way, that the light reflecting off the ceiling kind acts like the sun shining about us in the sky on a cloudless day.
Or, in this case, we might view that light as the reflection of the Son shining down on us from above. And that makes me smile.
Lee Lamberts 