A Thought For The Week Of July 18, 2016

"In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16) It intrigues me that Jesus refers to "your light." I've always assumed that the light that shines from us is God's light; that it's just a reflected light. As I've often heard it explained, we're like the moon - with no light of our own, but only able to reflect another source of light; in the moon's case, the light of the sun and in our case, the light of God. And yet here Jesus refers to it very specifically and very deliberately as "your light." And I started to wonder as I pondered his words: is this a reference to our changed nature, and to our changed priorities? One could argue, after all, that everything that exists reflects God in some way. All created things, after all, reflect something of their creator. It's in the nature of a created thing to reflect its creator. But as Christians are we not called a new creation? Perhaps, because of that, it's no longer enough for us to simply reflect God to the world. That's very passive, after all. I wonder if, when Jesus refers to "your light," he might not be saying that just being like the moon, and simply waiting for the sun's light to strike you every now and then isn't enough. Perhaps Jesus is saying that we are to be active participants in God's work - that we have our own light, and that we are to actively seek out places and opportunities where it can shine most fully. The light we shine is still for the glory of God, of course, but we no longer just sit back and wait for opportunities to shine to appear. Now we seek those opportunities out, and we become active participants in God's mission of redeeming and transforming the world in the power of love. By our new nature as children of God we no longer just reflect light - we have become light, and a troubled world needs all the light we can possibly shine.