Living in the Light
“Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.”Isaiah 58:8
The Lord tells us through Isaiah that if we care for those around us — “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own” (Isaiah 58:7) — then our light shall shine brightly and every infirmity be healed and God will be with us. This seems to foreshadow the corporal works of mercy. So, do we do the things the Lord asks of us? Do we feed the hungry, help the poor, welcome to stranger, embrace the unwanted, and care for one another? Sounds so simple, but not always easy to do because of sin. Sometimes our pride and our human prejudices, however subliminal, get in the way and leads us to selfishness. When we allow that to dictate how we live our lives, the light that we have within us becomes dimmed by that metaphorical bushel basket, hiding Christ from others.
When we allow the love of Christ to take root in our hearts, those works will come naturally to us and we will do them selflessly with joy. However, there may be time when we do good works but the light we shine forth is not the true Light, but rather our own light. We must take caution. We must remember that it is Christ whom we must shine forth, not ourselves. We must not make the good works about US but rather about Christ and those for whom we do those good works.
To live in the Light, we must know who the Source of this Light is; we must come to know Christ. The Baltimore Catechism tells us that God created us to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him in the next. Knowing, loving, and serving. To serve someone we must love them. To love them we must know them. If we do not truly know the Lord and not simply know about Him, we will not genuinely love Him, let alone serve Him and His people. So, if we really want this “light to break forth like the dawn” and have the Lord as our light and our salvation, then we must get to know Him. Let us take some time everyday to get to know the Lord and to grow deeper in relationship with Him so that we might come to know Him, love Him, and serve Him, and be moved to love our neighbors so that we might live in the Light of Christ in this life and allow that Light to lead us to eternal life.
