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Posts Tagged ‘light’

Stand Against the Dark World

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2010| 5 Comments »

We are asked to put on God’s armor in order to stand against spiritual forces from the dark world. Sounds like fantasy but there is a decision to be made here: truth or fiction? I’m leaning toward the truth side. And if true, the real battle has been waging on without me.

Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

I have not been asked to advance against the enemy, merely to stand. And yet, I have not been moving forward or standing, not really. Instead, I have been buffeted about internally. My mind has been captured by the distractions of the world, my spirit veiled by self-absorption, and my heart hardened.

The greater fool, I, for trying so hard to do battle in this 3-D world. I’ve been totally caught up in my ambitions, my weight, my aging, my eyesight, my losses, my children’s successes or lack thereof, and so on. I’m not even on the right playing field.

Currently, I’m reading the Suzanne Collins trilogy, Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. These stories take place in a futuristic world where our country has been divided into districts, all serving the “Capitol.” Each district has a single industry. Once a year, each district must send two “tributes” (teenagers) to fight to the death, with only one victor. The victor’s district is then blessed with extra food etc. for that year. In the second book, because the lead characters foiled the Capitol in book one, the games take on a cruel turn. I won’t give that away, but a phrase has stayed with me that is relevant to my discussion here: “Remember who your enemy is.”

In our world, we have forgotten who the true enemy is as well. Instead, our countries fight wars, terrorists prevail, our sons and daughters die violently, people starve, and natural resources are despoiled. We continue to struggle with the symptoms instead of the root causes.

Photo by Angelo Juan Ramos

It all comes back to the Light and illuminating from within: living a life of love, submitted and thereby filled with the Holiest Spirit, who works in union with my personal spirit. And out of that life pours forth compassion, forgiveness, and beauty.

I can go about serving others, visiting the sick and dying, feeding the hungry, comforting the homeless, and giving from my livelihood. But if I do these things without the Light, they are band-aids.

It’s time to stop living as though it’s such a great mystery. The mystery has been revealed through the Christ and is a living, powerful presence in me through the Holy Spirit.

I want to stand today. I want to be counted as one standing. I want to shine.

(FD 15)

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Radiance = Holiness

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2010| 1 Comment »

Here was the plan: Jesus would come to Earth and do his best to explain/demonstrate the whole Spirit thing and then sacrifice himself to wrap up and seal the covenant. Promised result: the eyes of our hearts would be opened wide and we could live likewise. Actual result: we’re still discussing it.

Ephesians 5:25b, 27
. . . Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy. . . and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Here’s another word picture for all of this: the high rise window washer who puts himself in great danger to clean the windows so that light can be seen both in and out. But then we shut the drapes.

I have everything I need to enter the story life that God intends. I have the body, the circumstances, the family, the nation, the neighborhood, the friends, the talents, the washed windows . . . (all the layers of my drapes are on the inside of the windows).

The light is there. I made covenant with Christ thirty years ago. I am in the Body. I am loved by God.

During this time of fasting, I am slowly opening my drapes, one by one.

While the light of God might be more like the sun, shining brightly with heat and energy everywhere, the Holy Spirit is radiant and glows, permeating the dark spaces with steady but gentle light.

There is radiance and there is holiness within me. Like the last day of school before summer vacation, I want to open the doors and allow it all to pour out.

(FD 10)

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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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Warnings!

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2010| 1 Comment »

I know God is trying to get my attention: sometimes through people telling me of roadblocks ahead while other times through circumstances. But, like a bull in a china shop, I tend to charge right in. On occasion, the china escapes unscathed. But too often, there’s a great sound of shattering glass.

II Corinthians 12:20
For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.

My independent streak started at a young age. My father died when I was only nine and I was a latch key kid for several years. My mother was a difficult woman who suffered from bipolar disorder (we only figured that out much later). She was unpredictable and ultimately, for me, unsafe. I told her as little as I could and I made many of my own decisions. These choices included getting married at eighteen (I was already a Junior in college), because I was sure I was ready to be out on my own, divorcing 5 years later, moving to New York City to be come “rich and famous.” These early years set up lots of walls.

It’s hard to hear or see warnings when a person is so doggone “capable.”

Somehow, I have allowed myself to believe that warnings are a negative thing. They are restrictions. They are penalties. But today, I have a new view.

God’s warnings are actually lighthouses. The beams of light give instruction and information: be careful, danger is nearby, be alert, watch! Everything is fine, just be on guard for challenges. Avoid unnecessary consequences. Change course if necessary. There is always another way to get there. I love you. I care about you.

As a parent, I have tried to be a lighthouse for my children. And don’t I do this out of my love for them? Would God do any less?

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Humility in the Miracles

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

People who are regularly used of God in miraculous ways do not need to talk about it. It’s the one-shot Sally’s who go on and on about the marvel. I’ve been guilty of this myself–not good.

II Corinthians 12:5-6
I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

It’s not that the miracle didn’t happen. It did. And certainly, to be on the receiving end of a miracle is worth shouting about.

But I’m talking about the messenger, the hands that were laid on the sick, the prayer that was said for wholeness, or the advocate who placed the petition at the foot of the cross. This is the one who must learn and walk in humility and silence. It’s a most difficult road.

I am sure Paul was used in a vast array of miracle-working ways. Some of these incidents are shared in scripture, but I’m guessing many are not. Clearly, he was anointed by God and sent by Christ. He knew and understood the temptation to boast of such things. He saw the results of this boasting in others. It became a separation between the purity of the Spirit moving through the healer and human pride.

We are all called, as vessels of the supernatural, to bring light, healing, and wholeness to those around us. This was the plan all along. Christ within.

“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” [John 14:11-12]

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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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Hair, Head Coverings & Confusion

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I was going to review some of the current exegesis on hair & head coverings for women and/or men and how it’s applicable today. Forget that. It’s massive and contradictory. So what is my “take away” today? Where is the nugget that will have meaning and application for me?

I Corinthians 11:2, 7
Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God . . . A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.

With just a little reading about these passages, it’s clear to me that a great number of the verses are grounded in the culture of the day. There are modern day examples of coverings like the burqas of the Middle East, the “caps” worn by Mennonite and Amish women, or the veils worn by women in various high church services and masses. Some of these traditions have morphed into the custom of wearing hats in church, a practice still prevalent among many African American churches or seasonally in a variety of churches, like Easter Sunday.

But here’s the truth of it: I don’t wear head coverings. I don’t wear them to church (unless I am visiting a church where this is expected) and I don’t wear them to pray, sing, or worship. About the only time I wear a hat is to shield my face from the sun at the beach.

If I weigh the controversy over head coverings with the Jesus Creed, to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul & strength and to love my neighbor as myself, could it possibly matter? Does God love me less? Do I cut myself off from the blessings of God?

Now, what about the sister verses that are slipped in between the head covering ones? That “man” is the image & glory of God while woman is the glory of man or that Christ is the head of man while man is the head of woman. Hiccup. Hiccup. I need to take a breath here.

All right, I can work through the headship scenario: since Christ is the head of man, well, then Christ is ultimately the head of woman too (If A=B and B=C, then A=C). That was easy.

But what about the glory piece? Am I the light of “man?” Do I, woman, reflect the character of “man” by who I am, what I do, and what I say? Do the men I know reflect the character of God in Christ?

If my previous post about the default of glory being both male and female believers reflecting the glory of God, then, wouldn’t we be the glory for one another, whether male or female. It’s about relationships, to God and to each other. If I am not in community with men and women, there is no reflecting going on anyway. I cannot be the glory for any person without being in relationship with him or her. I cannot sustain the light of Christ if I am not in relationship there either.

I’m sure there is plenty of room for debate about these verses and the “roles” of men and women, but I’m not going to spend more time trying to justify my stance. If I can be the light and glory of Christ in the world, then the rest will work out the way it is supposed to work out. If I love as Christ loved, then glory abounds. If I learn and practice authentic humility, then both man and woman are lifted up. This I believe.

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