Powered by the Son

My oldest son bought me a solar-powered lighthouse for the yard. All day long the panel on the top absorbs the sunlight, and then when darkness settles in, the light comes on and shines brightly all night long, powered solely by the energy that was absorbed during the daylight hours.

All of us in the Body of Christ are called to be God’s light in dark places. We gather together regularly to absorb the light of the Son of God, and then as we go our separate ways in the sometimes-dark places that are our jobs, our homes, and our lives outside of church, we can shine brightly, powered with the spiritual energy we stored during our time together.

God expects more of us, however, than that we be bright with His love just after church services. Lighthouses along the coastline guide weary travelers every night, and we, too, are called to show His goodness on a regular basis. That means that we have to have our spiritual solar panels pointed in His direction every single day, reading our Bibles, opening our hearts in prayer and absorbing the light of His presence, so that when darkness comes we’ll be powered up and ready to guide the lost safely home to the shelter of His love.

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

(Ephesians 6:19 KJV)

Party Girl

"I'm a Party Girl." The thought brings a smile to my lips and a chuckle from somewhere deep within, probably in the vicinity of where I've kept my party-girl persona safely tucked away and hidden from view all these years.

A partying past is not normally something to be proud of in Christian circles. It's usually associated with a life of sin now covered by the Blood. Once put behind us, we lock the memory of those days away and bury them in the graveyard of our sinful past, rarely re-visiting them as we seek a lifestyle that glorifies the One we now serve. But every once in a while, aspects of our old personality pop up and reveal who we really are deep down inside.

God told me the other day that I wasn't fooling Him with my pretense of propriety. And I'm delighted by the revelation that it's okay to be who I really am, while leaving behind the sinful behavior which dominated my life in the past. I can let the lightheartedness of my life emerge from the more proper and reserved person I thought I had to become to be pleasing to the very One Who put the laughter inside of me in the first place! I am free to embrace each day fully and live it with laughter and joy, as God intended for me to do.

He's looking for "party girls" like me to spend eternity with. After all, the greatest celebration of them all is just about to begin.

"O Lord, you have searched me and you know me."
(Psalm 139:1 NIV)

Look Up!

I find cemeteries to be wonderfully peaceful places. I love to wander along the rows of graves and read the headstones, looking at names and dates and the occasional cryptic messages carved in granite for those left behind. Many make me stop for a minute and think about my life and the way that I am living it in the time that I have left. Understandably, my eyes are usually looking down at the ground as I make my way through the burial plots.

But not so come fall. When I walk though the same grassy hillsides in the autumn months I find a message for me not on the stones on the ground but high in the treetops. My eyes are forever lifting to the colorful branches that shade these final resting places, heeding some internal urge to simply look up.

Truly the answers I seek to the situations I’m faced with every day come not from the world around me but the one above me. Whatever the spiritual condition of those buried there when they left this earth, they now know the truth about the love of God and Jesus’ death on the cross to save us. The lessons they may have learned too late to help them are now mine for the taking if I will just go beyond the obvious beauty of the surroundings and heed the call to look up to God while I still have the chance.

“My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Jehovah;
in the morning I will direct my prayer to You, and I will look up.”
(Psalm 5:3 MKJV)