But Have the Light of Life

Sometimes that which follows after is loaded with significance.

I was only looking for a Friday evening venue for my husband and I to enjoy with some friends.  Our town has become a vineyard-producing destination, a romantic getaway raised up from pasture-land.  The lead singer’s bio read, “She laid down her Bible and picked up her guitar…”  Turns out she was a preacher’s daughter; traveling about in the 70’s church to church, her angst about life, her unanswered questions, must have grown bigger than the back seat of her father’s station wagon, and a decade ago she just gave it all up, dropped out of Bible school and joined the night life with her great voice and poetic soul.  I couldn’t let it drop:  how does this happen?  What seeds are planted bearing terrible fruit, that cause a person one day to leave that which is good, true, holy?

Sure, I get the draw.  Doing Washington, DC all night is one of my most vibrant memories even 20 years later:  bookstore till midnight, dancing and exploring the streets, lingering over pre-dawn breakfast, and then sitting out on the third story stone windowsill watching the sun come up over the city--the wild abandon of sharing experiences with another and opening up the soul.

Yes, for the adventurous who feels bound and gagged by packaged religion, the poetic that feels the pulse of the night drawing, and the list goes on.  But aren’t we all much at fault in the body of Christ who have failed to paint life in Christ in effervescent colors, in Truth?  Nothing is more wildly adventurous than those who have forsaken all to go where Christ leads them—their stories are better cliffhangers than Indiana Jones, more intense than Bourne, and more dynamic  than Avatar.  Are we raising up our children to love their stories—full of life, brilliance, peril and thrill--or the movies that settle for lesser story, action, adventure?  To seek out these stories in those around them, old friends and newly met? Nothing is more poetic than the unveiling of a world the Master Poet created and sustains, with all its human souls and their weavings.  Are we raising up the next generation to feel the pulse of that beauty, the beauty in another human soul, in history, in God’s stories unfolding?

 God reveals the vitality of His life, His way, to those who believe in Him, trust in Him, and are thankful to Him.  “Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.”  (Romans 1:21)  How important do we think it is, then, that we teach our children to have grateful hearts and tongues?  If God has ordained praise from the mouth of babes, as the psalmist says, then when are they too young to be taught a posture of thankfulness, no tolerance for the planting seeds of ingratitude and discontent which shelter so many other sins?  Do we think this is a small thing?

Talking with our children about some significant falling into various sins that they are observing of people they know and some that they love a great deal, the inevitable ending of these conversations is for us to remind ourselves of the sins which dog our own hearts and follows hard after our heels.  Jesus lifted up the woman caught in adultery; he scanned the crowd condemning her and  as they breathlessly waited for His diatribe against her sins, he swept them off their feet:  “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”  The oldest person there, having lived enough years to become familiar with his own heart and thoughts, walked out first, knowing of what he was made.  And the entire space emptied, as each soul looked inside and knew, before the living Christ, that he or she was capable even as the woman before them, of too much to mention.

But I digress.  What follows, loaded with significance, after Jesus’ mercy-laden “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more”*?

“I am the light of the world.  He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life*.” 

Have you ever walked the dark night with a baby, with trouble, with sleeplessness,  and welcomed even  the gray dawn, only to be undone in your soul by the beauty of gold when the sun touches everything and draws life from the shadows?  We live where the rain and overcast can go on for months without ceasing.  All of life changes for us when the sun comes out.

How much more this woman--how much more we --come to life, feel the shadows turn burnished and the world illumined, with the coming of the Son into our hearts.  Light wells up from the very depths.  Breathtaking.  Shocking.  Awe-inspiring, life-giving.  What could be more satisfying than “having the Light of Life*”?

*John 8:7-12