Shining Forth

A few thoughts from the morning meditation.

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory…”  Hebrews 1:3

Reminds me of the Christ’s encouragement to let our lights shine, from Matthew 5.   I’m into verbs these days–the tension between being and doing notwithstanding–so I’m thinking, “to radiate.”  Merriam Webster online has it like this: “to send out in or as if in rays.”  The most striking thing about these definitions is the tension between the thing that is radiated, and the thing that radiates.  When I think of the sun radiating, I figure it has no choice.  It’s on fire, so to speak.  But the intentionality of “to send out” is surprising.  What does it mean if I have something to radiate and just don’t bother?  Again, Jesus:  “Let your light shine…”  The light is not ours to come up with…it is present, not of our own making, and frankly, we can take no credit for it.  We are not makers of light.  We are however, radiators.

Makes me think of heat.  Plus, what do you do with a busted radiator?

II Corinthians 5 has us reflecting God’s glory as Moses face did when he came down off the mountain.  I look at the folks I know, and if I was cynical, I’d say where’s all that glory?  But truth is, where is it not?

Let your light shine…

Implies that our primary potential action in relation to light is to shut it down.  That the natural thing is to close it off, refuse it, hide it, get out the basket to put it under.  So many of us spend our lives doing just that.  Fear, bad experiences, shame…light gets shuttered and clamped down.  Strange that light-shining seems so dangerous. But in a world that loves dark…

One final note:  I told two people yesterday that I’d found the meaning and purpose of life.   They thought I was kidding.  And perhaps I was.

But maybe not.  Or maybe it’s just a clue…

Time to write a book…