Uncertain Darkness 2

“You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world … Let your light shine before men” (Matthew 15:13-16). 

We are not responsible for saving others, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. Our responsibility is to shine the light God has given us into the world God has placed us in. When we go into a dark room, we bring the Light that is within us into that room. Our job in a dark room is to bring the Light who will expose darkness. That doesn’t mean that we are to walk into every dark room we find. A large part of following God’s will for our life is determining what dark rooms God has not called us to walk into and which ones we are not called to walk inty. By not walking into the rooms we have not been called to, we will have the time and strength to walk into the dark rooms God has for us.

Expose the darkness God has given us influence over with the light God has given within us.

Our life is like a burning candle; even if we could live as long as Methuselah, we are only made to burn for a short amount of time. Just as a candle burns brighter when its flame joins another burning candle, so our life will be more impactful when we live in community with other believers. As burning candles, we all are in the process of losing ourselves in this life. As we go through life, we drip wax along the way. We don’t get to determine whether or not we will melt away, we only get to determine where, what and who we will allow our life to drip onto. When we join others in friendship we create a better glow as we burn. We can keep a room dimly lit by ourselves or we can join with other candles and build a growing light that we share with the world around us. Learning to build glowing relationships with other candles can fuel our desire and knowledge of building a relationship with the Light. 

We do not need to stand alone in a dark room, we can bring other lights with us into the dark room we are called to. We can also enter rooms filled with the lights of other candles, as we remember that the light is not our own, but is God’s light. The learning process of being unselfish and not standing alone continues with us in our relationship with the Light. Since our life is burning anyhow, we gain a greater purpose when we direct the melting wax of our life to flow into places that don’t know what it’s like to be melted by the presence of Light. We keep the flame alive in us best by causing it to come alive in others.

The light in our life is not our own or something we can produce; we can only reflect the light coming from the One True Light.

The mirror does not say to the person looking at it, this is how I will reflect you. The mirror reflects the face of the person because that’s what it was created to do. We were created to reflect God’s light to the world and the way we can continue to reflect Him clearly is by washing ourselves in the river of life that also flows out of every believer who is filled with the Spirit of God.

We may feel like we are surrounded by darkness with only a faint reflection of dim Light within. But we can turn towards that Light no matter how dim He feels in our life and we will find Him becoming more and more clear in our life. If we search for the Light, we will surely find it.