TURN ON THE LIGHT!

TURN ON THE LIGHT! 

Advent is the darkest time of the year.  The days are short, the nights are long, 

and then there’s stress around the holidays to contend with.

If you check the hospitals you can see that this time of year routinely adds to their patient load, even without covid.

To add to that, Southern California Edison has decided to turn off our power, sometimes for days at a time.  

At the ranch that means we don’t have water, either, because it’s pumped by electricity.  That creates some anxiety.  

Some folks, like me, suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Too much gloom outside and I start to internalize the gloom.

What’s the solution to all of this anxiety and darkness?

TURN ON THE LIGHT!

( I even have a full spectrum light that I use when there are too many dark days)

And that’s just what God did at Christmas— 

He sent us Jesus, the Light of the World. 

He marked the way with a star. 

HE TURNED ON THE LIGHT.

We see references to Light all through the Bible.  We also use light in everyday speech— We:

-Shed light on something

-Light up a path

-think of “bright” ideas as a lightbulb in our mind

-look for the light at the end of the tunnel

Imagine for a minute entering a dark room in your house and spending time and effort trying to push the darkness out.  Have you ever tried it?  Silly, right?

What is the obvious solution to the darkness?

(TURN ON THE LIGHT!)

Even a candle or 2 is enough to make the darkness fade.  I’ve used a lot of them recently.

It’s actually hard work to achieve total darkness. The complete absence of light is foreign to most of God’s world.  

I used to work in a photo lab before we went to digital photography.  In order not to expose the film before we developed it, we had to seal all the doorways and windows and drape everything with black.  

You can lose your equilibrium with that level of darkness.

Our souls have the potential for that kind of darkness, too.  

That’s why God sent Christ— to be the Light in our darkness. 

 

What was the first thing God did in Creation?  

HE TURNED ON THE LIGHT!

   

In the OT we see many examples of God’s light, or His Glory.  

God told Moses he couldn’t look directly at God and live.  

The light was so pure and unfiltered that the mere energy of it would burn up things in its path.

Yet John 3:19 tells us this:

And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil.

People didn’t recognize Jesus when He came because they expected Him to look like something else.  

They wanted the Messiah to fit the model they had in mind.  

But slowly some began to recognize Him. 

-Steven, dying from being stoned, saw the light of heaven open up and Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father.  

-Paul was blinded by his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus.

NOW the Holy Spirit lives inside believers.  We have that blinding Light living right inside.

We could spend a lifetime trying to push the darkness out of our souls, but what would it be like to TURN ON THE LIGHT instead?

At the name of Jesus, darkness fades away quickly.

He is the Light of the World.  The Bright and Morning Star.

And He lives right inside us.

You’d think we would be leaking light all the time!

Matthew 5:14-16:

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

This last summer I read a book called Imagine Heaven by John Burke.  

Burke set out to study the phenomenon of Near Death Experiences in some detail, and it’s 

fascinating, scriptural, and very edifying—

I highly recommend this book.

What I want to pull out of it for this discussion are descriptions of what some of the people experienced during their NDE’s:

Dr. Mary Neal had this to say about the people who came to meet her when she arrived in Heaven:

“It was as though they were like the Northern Lights in that they were a physical form but their edges were a little indistinct. It’s sort of translucent, pearlescent, shimmery. A brilliance of light— just exploding in it, and the light was not just something you would see.  If you look at the sun, you see light and it’s blinding.  This was really a light born of love, I don’t know how else to explain it.”   

Dean Braxton’s heart stopped for over an hour during surgery.  When he revived he described seeing Jesus:

“Jesus is pure light. He brightness was before me, around me, part of me, and in me. He is brighter than the noonday sun, but we can still look at him in heaven.  I was in Jesus, and Jesus was shining out of me. The brightness was around me. I was part of the brightness, and the brightness was shining out of me.  All of it was life.”

Romans 8:17 says: “ Now if we are children of God, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.”

I am going to guess that many of you have had the experience of basking in God’s Light when someone else let it shine.  Raise your hand if you’ve had that privilege!

SO HOW DO WE DO THAT?

Let’s start with something simple.  We can ask— a simple prayer we can pray over and over, whenever we need it.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Light of the World, shine through me.”

There.  Simple.

The spiritual discipline of praying this prayer makes us “wake up” to the reality that God is right here, all the time, eager to have a conversation, to answer a prayer that certainly is His will.  After all, we read in Matthew that He commands it.

And anything He commands us to do, He empowers us do by the Holy Spirit within us.

By turning our attention to Him in this way, we begin to think with Him, to think like Him, and over time, His Spirit within us will work out our salvation in this way.

In fact, you will probably start to see little things that you didn’t see in your behavior and character before.  It’s like TURNING ON THE LIGHT.  

-You might be moved to pray for someone spontaneously.  

-You might find that you want to commit a span of time each day/week to prayer that you haven’t done before.

-You might find yourself calling someone to see if you can help them with something you hadn’t thought of before.

-You might feel led to pay for someone’s groceries, or help them to the car if they have a big load.

-You might find you have a sudden desire to hand out Bibles, or collect blankets for the homeless, or write encouraging notes to people, or spend time with God in contemplative prayer, or …

I’m sure you see where this is going…

If you pray for God’s light to shine through you, He will answer.  Be persistent.  

You will find that you have a lot more Light than you thought you did bottled up inside.  

And what good is it doing bottled up?? Why not shine some on those around you?

After all— Jesus is paying the power bill, and not even Edison can shut it off!

We all have gifts of the Spirit.  If you think for a minute, you probably know what they are.  It’s what I call my “sweet spot”— that act of giving to others that exhilerates you rather than depleting you. If you can’t quite put your finger on it, ask your spouse or a close friend.  I bet they know.  And they’ll be happy to tell you.

I have a survey you can take if you want to find out more.  Come talk to me.

But mostly talk to God.  He’s the source of any Light we have, and He has the power to make it shine through us.  

That’s the true meaning of Emmanuel.  God with us.  God IN us.  God THROUGH us.  

The treasure of Christ held in our earthen vessels.  Most of us have plenty of cracks to let out LOTS of light!

Isaiah 9:2 tells us:  The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…

Let me close with this blessing:

Deep peace of the running wave to you,

Deep peace of the flowing air to you,

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,

Deep peace of the shining stars to you,

Deep peace of the watching shepherds to you,

Deep peace of Christ, the Light of the World, to you.

(Gaelic Blessing)

Amen.