Thoughts for the Day

‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar, but on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.’

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

As we get older our body begins to fail us somewhat and we find we cannot read the text in a book as easily as we once did and glasses are necessary. Of course others have suffered with myopia or short-sightedness all their life. Theirs is the opposite case, it's an eye disease where light focuses in front of, instead of on, the retina and distant objects appear blurry though things close can be normal. My husband and sister both suffered from this, and neither could distinguish anything in the distance without their glasses.

As well as physical myopia though, we can suffer from spiritual myopia. Jesus' words about light and our eyes has many meanings, and reminds me that just as physically light can fail to reach fully into our eye so the same thing can happen, spiritually. We have seen how the Pharisees have not been able to see Jesus as the 'light of the world'. But if we allow God's light to be placed within the lamp (that is in us) and then do nothing with it, then it's as if we are hiding it in a secret place like the cellar. It's not of much use! Another form of spiritual myopia concerns our relationships with others. If we become short-sighted in our relations with other people, seeing only what we want to see rather than what we should see, then we can become judgmental and critical.

Of course, the most obvious lesson of these verses is that we should desire Christ's light as our light - seeing and doing things as He would.

Lord Jesus Christ,
Light of the world,
fill us with Your light,
that we may see others
as You would have us see.
May we then seek to take
Your light into every
corner of our life
now, and in the years to come.
Amen.