Let it Shine

Imagine, if you will, that you have gone into the bush with me on a tramp through the winter snow (Linda can tell you from 42 years of personal experience that at this point you’re probably in serious trouble). And, imagine if you will, that we somehow stumbled on what looks like a bear’s den—a rather ragged hole in the earth under a root-ball of a huge blown-over spruce tree. There is steam wafting up into the crisp wintry air from the hole. It’s probably bear exhaust—at least it smells like bear exhaust.

If you’re tramping through the bush with me, there is nothing for it but that we should go into that bear’s den to see what we can learn about bears and dens. And if you’re tramping through the bush with me, being an incorrigible minimalist in just about everything, I wouldn’t have any flashlight, and neither would I have any matches.

So into the hole of the bear’s den we go. Fortunately there is no bear in the hole, which is a good thing because in my excitement and dotage I would have forgotten to take any precaution to make sure that there was no bear at home in the hole we just climbed into. What we find instead of a shallow bear’s den is the beginning of an elaborate tunnel and cave system. And suddenly, if you’re with me at least, my short attention span kicks in and the bear hunt is completely forgotten and has morphed into a spelunking expedition. Because Linda is not with us to smack me on the nose and bring me back on course, off we go crawling and feeling our way into the cave until we slip around several corners and through at least four tunnel junctions. And then, there is absolutely no evidence anymore of the opening that we slipped into.

It is completely dark, absolutely black; there isn’t even a remnant of light left in our imagination. You touch your nose with your open hand and you can’t see it. Up, down and sideways seem to have ceased to exist in your world. What has replaced them is a fear in the pit of your stomach that we have no idea how we are going to find our way out of this absolute black maze of tunnels. You kick yourself for following such a complete dolt without question. And together we sit on the cold dirt with our backs to one another contemplating the dark labyrinth we have wandered into.

Can you feel it? What you are experiencing is what the Bible refers to as darkness; or perhaps better put, the difference between dark and light. I did a little exegetical sleuthing. In the Hebraic mindset of the Bible, in the oft-employed metaphor of darkness used to depict evil and/or sin, whether it is used in an intellectual or moral sense, the darkness is absolute. There is no dusk—no shades of gray. It is cave-black darkness, the absolute absence of light; there is no light in it. Conversely, in the much-used metaphor of light, light is the absolute opposite to darkness. There is no darkness in it. Using the light and darkness metaphors in this way, the apostle John wrote: “This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)

Regarding God being absolutely separate from sin and evil and any of its life-sucking products, I find this to be an extremely revealing and comforting metaphor as I come to God. And then along comes Paul using the same biblical metaphor but in a different way.

Paul writes to the Ephesians: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8) Paul is using the same biblical metaphor of light and darkness to speak about sin and evil, but now he is speaking about persons who are of faith in Christ and he is doing so using the emphatic words “were” and “are.” When Paul says, once you “were” darkness he is acutely emphasizing that our darkness is in the past, and at the same time acutely emphasizing that our light is the present reality. In so much of Paul’s writings he emphasizes what we were without Christ and what we are in Christ.

Paul says that in Christ, we are light. Paul says live what we are. As usual, Paul leaves nothing to the imagination. He nails it down for me. Paul writes: “For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth.” (Ephesians 5:9 – 10) Live Christ like goodness, righteousness and truth. It sounds pretty heady to me. What on earth does that look like on the ground?

Several years ago, we were on our holidays out in the middle of nowhere in the West Chilcotin area of Central B.C. Linda, the kids and I were eating really nice greasy hamburgers in the tiny restaurant at Lee’s Corner. We were minding our own business, not doing anything particularly Christian you understand, when the only other people who happened to be in the place paid their bill and hesitantly came up to our table as they were leaving.

The elderly woman said to us, “Excuse me; I don’t mean to be forward, but are you folks Christians?”

I kind of looked over my shoulder a couple of times. In truth, I have to admit I kind of felt like my cover was just blown. I said, “yes” that we were Christians, that we were Presbyterian missionaries on a fishing mission in the Chilcotin.

The man said, “We thought you were Christians, and just watching you has blessed us.”
That was humbling to the extreme because as far as I knew the only thing significant that I had managed to do since sitting down in the restaurant was to drizzle beef grease all down my T-shirt. But it was the light of Christ that did it; the goodness, righteousness and truth that is in Christ and that gets deposited in the life of a person of faith in him. In an area where there ain’t exactly a whole lot of that going around, it shone forth through us and profoundly touched another person. And we had no idea.

So you are back in the cave with me. Man, is it ever black in here. Can you feel it? I don’t have any matches or a flashlight; do you? Oh, you were out to supper last night and picked up a package of penny matches and stuck them in your back pocket. So why don’t you pull out the pack and in this absolute blackness, strike one little match?

Can you describe the effect? That’s the effect, when you or I live Christ-like lives of goodness, righteousness and truth in the darkness of the world. The light of Christ in us exposes the darkness like a blinding light from a tiny match in a black cave. And it does not take much of a light to have a profound effect. Let it shine!