This Little Light of Mine

33 "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. 36 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you." (Luke 11:33-36 NIV)

Years ago I agreed to help a friend of mine who does fireworks with a show he wanted to choreograph to a live symphony. The idea was to put the fireworks cues in the appropriate places on the musical scores so that the fireworks would accent the dynamics of the music. I would sit with the orchestra during the performance and read the scores, calling the cue numbers over a walkie-talkie to the guys in the bunker firing the show. It was a good plan. To differentiate the cues from any musical markings on the score I decided to write the numbers with a red sharpie. That was not a good plan. 

Rehearsal was earlier in the afternoon with plenty of daylight and reading the cue numbers presented no problems. However, fireworks shows need to happen at night, right? When showtime rolled around all the lights were turned out except for the stage lighting which, for dramatic effect, utilized mostly red lights. The effect of the red lights on my red cues was to essentially render them invisible. I was able to call the first few cues by memory while my friend borrowed a flashlight from a nearby policeman. The pure white light from the flashlight was able to overcome the red glow and save the show. The red lighting looked great on stage, but it almost ruined the fireworks because it hid the things I needed to see the most. 

Jesus' words from Luke 11 are likely familiar to people who know little or nothing about other parts of the Bible. Most of us remember the words to the Vacation Bible School classic, "This Little Light of Mine," which takes its inspiration from Jesus' words. But let's not take time for the familiar part of the passage that is practically self-explanatory. Let's consider verse 35 which has a "what's wrong with this picture" quality.

"See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness."  What? How can light be darkness? Didn't we learn in sixth-grade science class that darkness is an absence of light? And isn't the light in question, the light within us, really the light of Jesus? How can that be darkness? How do we make sense of this? We start by going back 2,000 years to explore the original context. The way people understood sight in Jesus' day was that the eye actually emitted light which then made contact with whatever was around us. When the light that was coming from inside us made contact with something around us, we could see it. It wasn't light coming in, as we now know, it was light going out. 

Thus, if the light that was shining from within was being reflected from the pure light of Jesus living inside, then it would reveal everything outside including harmful things that could trip us up. However, if there was no light from Jesus inside and, instead, our eyes emitted a self-generated light that merely reflected the shadowy light of the world that we allowed in (understanding "the world" from a New Testament perspective as a reality apart from the things of God), then the harmful things of the world would disappear in that light and we would be subject to them becoming stumbling blocks. And let's be real. The world can cast a very appealing light on very some dangerous things and make them look irresistible. 

As we continue on our journey we should consider what is lighting our path. The shadowy light of the world can obscure danger like the blurry light of three o'clock in the morning can obscure the leg of a chair on the way to the bathroom. The light of Jesus and his brilliant kingdom of truth and compassion will illuminate those things upon which we can stub not just our toes but our lives. All together now, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

Blessings,
Larry