Light

When I was a young person, I must have heard one or more sermons on the light of God. It seems that God was described as having a flashlight or a search light (like they used in WWII or in openings of car dealerships) that shone into heart. As the light shone in hearts and searched out each niche and cranny, the sins of your heart, like roaches, would scurry into corners in order to hide.

As an amateur photographer, I now see God's light totally in a different light (so to speak) or perhaps I should say in a different perspective.

God's light instead of making us look bad or evil (we can do that for ourselves) makes us look good.

The light is direct, pure and wonderful in both the evening and the morning. At noontime the light is direct and there is no escaping it. But even then it makes the Maples shine more brilliantly than in any other time of the day.

In the evening, there may be the romantic light of a sun set or the gentle light of the moon playing on the waters at the Lake. Many nights at the lake, I go to sleep by the gentle light of the moon playing out gentle tunes on the ripples in the lake.

When I drive home in the evening I drive toward the setting sun. In front of me trees are not as beautiful but behind me they are glorious. It is all a matter of perspective. The evening sunlight makes beautiful those items on which it shines. Light provides an advantage. If I turn around I go from seeing a dismal landscape of gloomy coming darkness to one that is filled with light and glory. Perhaps, that is the nature of being converted.

A good photographer follows the light. He or she uses the sunlight, the wonderful natural light to make things look better than they are. In the early morning light it is almost impossible to take a bad picture.

When God's light hits our lives, it is almost impossible to look bad. We always look better when we shine in God's light instead of our own.

Light is what it is all about. Around God is beautiful light, known by the Jews as the Shekinah Glory of God. Around angels is light. Sometimes around us is the light of Christ.

It gives a whole new meaning to catching the rays. The rays catch us.

Light does not mean the same to me today that it did as a teenager. Somehow it is a kinder, better light than I heard about in sermons in church when I was a boy.

Then I saw darkly. I see better now.

HarleyDad