No Light

As I entered the church sanctuary, I looked up.  Everything looked the way it always did, except that one of the light fixtures that hung down from the ceiling was not lit.

Clearly electricity was flowing, for all of the other globes were giving plenty of light.  I suppose that the bulb inside was burned out.  Yet, from the outside, it could not be distinguished from the other fixtures.

There are many people who look a lot like Christians.  They even claim to be servants of Christ and attend to church regularly, but they have no light emanating from their lives.

This is the point of Christ's kingdom parable about the wheat and the weeds (or tares in some versions).  Jesus told a story about a man who sowed wheat in his field and then, while he was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weed seeds among the wheat.  His servants were chagrined and offered to pull up the weeds.  The man refused to let them, for fear that they would damage the wheat plants in the process.

It is clear that my goal is not to identify which people are weeds and which are wheat inside my church.  My goal must be to make certain that I am Christ's.

My tendency would be to do this by cleaning up my exterior, or trying to do more good deeds.  But, however good these things are, they are ineffective.  It is like polishing the light fixture when the bulb is burned out inside.

Instead, I must open myself to Jesus' light.  As this permeates my life, suddenly it sill begin to come forth.  Only then can I move from being a dark fixture within the church to one who reflect the Light of the World.