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Being the Light

 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.  It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. (Ephesians 5:8-13) 

Do you notice the little word missing twice in the first sentence… “in”? While there are Scripture passages that refer to our being in the light or walking in the light, this one doesn’t. We were darkness. Now, we are light in the Lord. We’re supposed to live like it, but while this passage treats it as a fait accompli, it’s one of those things we must continually work on. Often, that’s not an enjoyable task. Our own darkness is comfortable.

          It is as we live as children of light that we find out what pleases the Lord. We make way too big a deal about pleasing the Lord and doing His will. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t bother, but that we seem to think it’s one of the labors of Hercules, or some similar impossible tasks that only someone born of the gods could have the imagination and strength to accomplish.

          The world teaches us to do this as people, and even more so, it teaches parents to do this to children. John Lennon told the story of being asked by a teacher what he was going to be when he grew up. He said, “Happy,” and for some reason, that displeased the teacher. We’re not supposed to grow up to be happy, light, or good. We’re supposed to grow up to do something important that will make us successful – wealthy and powerful. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. It just tends to lead us into a bad way of thinking: that God’s pleasure in us is based on heroic performance.

          Of course, there is another side of this that could be said to be related to performance. If I have the means to accomplish X, and choose instead to accomplish X/100, or if I can’t be bothered to do what I know to be right to do, then I’m not being the light. The point isn’t to “not perform.” It’s that we needn’t think that we have to set every world record in our performance, when all that’s really needed is easy.

          If nothing else, in our striving to set those world records, we turn the spotlight on ourselves, which plunges everyone else into darkness.

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