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Walking In The Light
“I want to walk as a child of light. I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world.
The star of my life is Jesus. In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God.
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.”
-Kathleen Thompson, #184 ELW
One of the favorite images of the gospel writer John is the images of God’s light penetrating the darkness of this world. In John 1:4-5 we read “In him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Later in chapter eight verse twelve, Jesus says “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” According to John, if we’re having trouble making our way in the dark, the best place to focus our attention is on Jesus, the Bright Morning Star of God.
Epiphany is the season of the church year when we do exactly that. Depending on when Lent begins, we spend five to eight weeks pondering the brightest light that ever graced this planets surface. Beginning with the visit of the wise men to the place where Jesus lived with his parents in Bethlehem, Epiphany encourages us to explore those moments in the career of Jesus when he manifested his glory in the midst of a dark and indifferent world. This is a sobering exercise, for if we learn anything at all from these stories it is that the world likes being in the dark and resents being exposed to the light. Sometimes it seems as if the world would like nothing better than to extinguish the light which appeared in Jesus. Nevertheless, it is to our benefit to ponder these stories, for ultimately to find ourselves in the “light” is to find hope and healing and restoration.
As Melissa Tidwell states so eloquently in a reflection piece on the season of Epiphany:
“Walking in the light places us on the path to follow where the light leads. Sometimes we are led to exactly the place we did not want to go. Sometimes we are led to sacrifices, pain, suffering, ridicule, to searing self-knowledge, to the depths of our brokenness.
“But being in the presence of the light means we are in the presence of God, and in God’s presence our dross begins to be refined, and we begin to see the path differently. We can look at ourselves honestly, without illusion.
“Then as Symeon the New Theologian wrote. . .
We wake up inside Christ’s body
Where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Christ and God makes us, utterly, real, and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Christ transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in God’s light.”
May that be your experience this Epiphany as you journey towards the light and the joy of becoming more like Jesus, the Light of the World.
Your fellow Pilgrim on the Journey,
Pastor Greg Kintzi
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