Christian Living

Nightlights

by Terry Barlow
08/26/14
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    Come to find out that in ancient times people really did hide their lights under a bushel in order to create a nightlight effect. What does a nightlight allow us to do? It allows us to sleep but also to move about when necessary in some dim awareness of our surroundings. This lends more meaning to the exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 5th chapter that we not hide our lights under a bushel. Jesus goes on in that passage to associate light with the good works ("so that men may see your good works and..") we do as believers to express our faith.

    If we are allowing our inner light to be dimmed (and dumbed) down or completely extinguished, and our works to be significantly reduced, it is to accommodate a sleeping culture and our own tendency toward spiritual sleepiness or sluggishness. It is also to allow us to think and say that we are not TOTALLY in the dark and that we have some dim awareness of what is going on around us, for, after all, it is said and written that we see through a glass darkly anyway, right? No, it is not right, because actually we need all the light we can generate by the Holy Spirit to even see through a glass darkly. We will see NOTHING through the glass with our lights under a bushel basket! For what precious little we CAN see through that dark glass in this late hour, we desperately need to see!

   The fact that we are saved by grace through faith doesn't mean God might not actually lead us to DO something as a way of bearing fruit in the kingdom. The fact that so many of us Christians are using spiritual night lights so as not waken or stir anyone, even themselves, is a serious indication of just how many are napping on their watch,  how late the hour, and how gross and thick the darkness really is.