Let Your Light Shine

I am loathe to take my Christmas lights down. They have been coming on each day around 4pm since before Thanksgiving. They offer a cheery glow and a warm invitation just as darkness settles in.  

That stretch from mid-January to at least late-March or mid-April feels cold and lonesome without them. Don’t you think so? Could we all just agree to leave our Christmas lights up until Easter? 

Light. We love it so much. A burning candle. A constellation of stars. A lighthouse on a distant shore. Even now I’m gazing out my kitchen window at the neighbor’s fence, white lights still twinkling in the predawn not-yet sunlight. 

In the beginning, before God made the heavens and the earth, darkness was over the deep. But on the first day of creation, light overcame the darkness, as it always would from then on. 

Jesus, the creator of light itself, said, “I am the Light of the world” (John 9:5). 

The Maker of light is himself Light.

We dwell in darkness, but we have seen a great light (Matthew 4:16). And made in his image we are meant to shine too—like stars in a dark sky (Philippians 2:15), or like a city on a hill, or like a lamp on its stand (Matthew 5:14-16). 

In this age (as in ages past) walking in the Light is counter-cultural, even awkward, sometimes downright embarrassing. But the more we cling to the word of life, the brighter we shine (Philippians 2:15).  

And anyway, where else would we go? To whom else would we turn? Jesus has the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that he is the Holy One of God (John 6:68-69). 

Jesus is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. He is the light. Christian, as you follow Jesus, you offer life.