My wife, Dianna, will soon have a couple of skylights in her studio to let the light shine in. The project got me thinking about what we have to do to let the light shine into our own lives. It seems to me that there are two problems. One is that we are too eager to sing “This little light of mine” when, in plain fact, we do not have a light, little or otherwise. The other is that we give too little thought to the work required to allow God’s light to shine into us, much less through us to others.
I continue to struggle with the discontinuity between what we profess, and sometimes sing about, in worship and how that gets lived out in daily life. Maybe my angst comes from living in a conservative region where the few who profess to be Christian also tend toward the politics of rugged individualism based on a social ethic firmly rooted in the brambles of 19th century laissez faire with no apparent awareness of how much their own lives have been made possible by public policies that have organized collective resources for their benefit.
At the same time, I wonder how I, as pastor and teacher, can be more effective in helping those whom I am called to lead to adopt whatever personal disciplines will work for them that will allow God’s light to shine into their souls. While I’m at it, I wonder about that for myself as well. Perhaps you do also. What is needed for there to be skylights of the soul? How many have them and what do they say about them? How many know they don’t, and what do they have to say about that? How many don’t have a clue one way or the other, and don’t care?