Thursday 10^th January

Psalm 139:23-24, John 1:4-9

The role of the sun is both the give warmth and light. I love the sun. We are best friends. I love the warmth that it brings throughout the year and I especially love seeing a beautiful clear blue sky with the sun being the main attraction. Yet there are some who don’t like the sun. They do their best to stay away from it’s rays. Yet the reality is that there are very few places you can go during the sun’s high time, where you will not feel the suns warmth or light. However if you were to lock yourself in a dark room with no windows and outside the sun was in its full glory, if there was even one tiny small crack in the room you were in, the light would expose the darkness.

Jesus in John 1 is described as this light; a light that exposes darkness. Yet there are many who could not comprehend the light, rejected it and try to hide away from it. However because Jesus was the all seeing light, those who tried to run from His light rather had their sin exposed instead. Take the Samaritan woman at the well; she tried to hide from the light, yet Jesus exposed her adulteress sins. Or how about the rich man, who came to Jesus professing his righteousness in following all the 10 commandments since his youth, Jesus too exposed his love for money and an unwillingness to give it up for the sake of following Him. Or the strongest example of all, Judas Iscariot; his deceiving desires to help the poor and needy fooled the disciples but Jesus saw straight through and discerned a corrupt and treacherous heart and exposed it at the Last Supper.

The difference with a dark room and us, is that there is no-where we can hide. God’s fiery eyes see right into our souls. We can ‘deceive’ our brothers and sisters but we can’t deceive our Creator. Jesus’ light searches into the deepest depths of our hearts. We must however have an attitude like David. He knew that in his heart there was wrongdoing yet in his desire for purity he pleads with God to remove the things exposed by His light, so that his path may continue towards everlasting life with God Himself. This must be the same as our attitudes. Knowing God’s light exposes our sin is not enough. We must be like David and ask God to remove things that His light exposes, not hide away and cling on to the things that sever our communion with the Father.

God’s light is like the sun’s rays. We may have an old dusty table by the window. We may try to clean it with our spray or polish. Yet as soon as we open the curtain and let the sunlight in, there is dust on the table. Did the light bring the dust?? No. It merely exposed the dust. This is the same with our relationship with God and His exposing light. We may think that there are areas in our lives that don’t need cleaning or that we think we have already cleaned, but God’s light exposes the sin in the depths of our hearts. Our response to that light can be to hide away or to humbly submit to a Holy God in forgiveness and repentance knowing that your decision will determine your “eternal path” (Psalm 139:24).

God desires that His light may not just expose our sin and lead us into repentance but also that we might know His love more towards us. He desires that we give every part of ourselves to Him, just as He gave everything for us.