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Posts Tagged ‘light of the world’

Living in the Light

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2010| 2 Comments »

God's Light by Max Ash

God is light [I John 1:5]; God is love [I John 4:8]. And I am offered a chance to live my life in the circle of both: light and love. I ask for God’s indwelling and both are available to me. So, why do I continue to shutter the light and edit the love? Why do I “kick against the goads?”

Ephesians 5:8-10
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

This is the prayer that Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity would recite each day (by John Henry Cardinal Newman)

Dear Jesus,
Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me
that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me,
but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others;
the light, O Jesus will be all from You;
none of it will be mine;
it will be you, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You the way You love best,
by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching,
not by words but by my example,
by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.

It’s a process, that’s why. It’s a daily prayer, a daily unveiling, an awareness, a practice.

I’m thinking this is more difficult alone than in a group. The whole point of fellowship with other light-minded people is to help keep the light shining, to fan the flame, to encourage the embers, to light the darkness.

“Kindle in me the fire of your love . . . ”

(FD5)

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Face the Face

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If I arrange a meet up with a previously unfamiliar person in a public place, we exchange identifiers: I’ll be wearing a red scarf or the other person will wear a straw hat. We do this to recognize one another. In the case of Christ, light recognizes Light. How will I know Jesus? “You’ll know,” God says, “you’ll know.”

II Corinthians 4:6
For God . . . made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

This is of great comfort to me. We live in a world of charlatans and an array of “Elmer Gantrys,” who work hard to deceive the people around them. I have feared being deceived. But here, God promises the illumination of knowledge in my soul will guide me to recognize the true face of Jesus, the glory of God.

“When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the LORD’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant.” [Exodus 34:33b-35a]

The face of Jesus is luminous because of God’s glory within, not just reflected, like Moses. An object is either luminous (generates its own light) or illuminated (reflects light).

When a person’s face is relaxed and open, that face radiates and reflects warmth. Some examples that come to my mind are mothers with their newborn children, children in sleep, brides in love; we have all seen it at one time or another. When Jesus walked among the people, He had that look, that Light, all the time. It was catching. Jesus’s face reflected in the faces of the people.

“As light was the beginning of the first creation; so, in the new creation, the light of the Spirit is his first work upon the soul.” [Matthew Henry commentary]

I cannot stand face to face with the physical Jesus today. This illumination is now within. This Light is in the worship, in prayer, in contemplation.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!”
Your face, LORD, I will seek. [Psalm 27:8]

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Blinded by the god of this age

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Who is the god of “this” age. Paul referenced the power of the god of his age who blinded the mind and heart, is it the same god? Is this that scrappy scapegoat “the devil,” or is it we ourselves? Aren’t we mini-gods, manipulating the world around us with our knowledge and discovery?

II Corinthians 4:4
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

In an age where logic and science rule, evidence and observation reign, is there room for faith in paradox and the miraculous?

How do we believe in mountains can be moved by “faith as big as a mustard seed?” How do we believe that the Lazarus’s of this age, can rise from the dead by command. How do we embrace the peculiarities of Christianity where the meek inherit the earth, turn the other cheek, die to live, give to receive, and so forth.

In Mark 10:50-52, Jesus asked the blind man what he wanted. It was up to the blind man to actually ask to see.

Lord, where I am blind, allow me to see.

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Save the World

Posted in Time Up to Pentecost, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

John 3:17 (Amplified edition)
For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.

How many of us have forgotten that the Son didn’t come just “to save” us as individuals but for the sake of the world. Just like the world in the time of Noah, we have been on a crash course for ruin. And everything has suffered: the animals, the landscape, the oceans, the weather, the children … everything. So God sent his “only Son” to make a supreme sacrifice so that the law of sowing and reaping could be nullified for anyone who believed in Him. This process is not just so you and I can go to “heaven” when we give our bodies back to the Earth. This “deal” was made for the whole world. This was a supernatural transaction.

Those of us who have believed are in the recovery business…. recovering that which has been lost.
We are in the lighting business… shining in the dark places.
We are in the food business… bringing savor (salt) to the tasteless.
We are in the hydro business… bringing streams of water to the dry places.
We are in the messenger business… bringing the good news that the Kingdom of God is near.

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