Matthew 5:14 "You are the light of the world.
The Light in the Darkness
I was very annoyed one evening when sitting behind a teenager in a movie theater who was wielding a cell phone. It was not the ringing of the phone that annoyed me, because the teenager had the phone set to “manner” mode.
It was the light.
She checked her phone at least ten times during the movie, and the light, suddenly appearing in the dark theater, drew my eyes like sugar drawing flies.
No doubt she thought she was being polite. Her phone WAS quiet, after all. But her light in the darkness, however unintentional, came close to ruining my enjoyment of the movie.
But it made me wonder how many lights I unintentionally shine in the movie theaters of life
Robert Burns wrote a poem, To a Louse, in which he watches a louse (singular for “lice,” I suppose) crawling on the fancy hairdo of the woman in front of him in church. Her little insect guest drew and held his attention, and in result: he didn’t think about the woman’s beauty, the sermon’s message, or the hardness of the pew seat. All he could see was that bug. He ends by suggesting that we all consider “how others see us.”
Christians are called to be lights in a dark world. Usually we assume that the light is a good thing. But sometimes I fear we are unintentionally distracting lights.
When we answer the hunger of a foreigner with cold preaching about religious differences.
When our condemnation of sin is louder than our proclamation of the sweet gospel.
When we say, “there, but for the grace of God go I…” instead of, “there go I , just with a different sin.”
When we respond to the loss of a mother’s soldier-son with cold criticism of political processes.
When we see the unlovely, and instead of giving them grace, we emphasize their unloveliness.
I wonder how often we are shining bad, distracting light, ignorant of what others see.
I reckon that more people are saying, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” than we think.