Ministry Musing
By Donna Kelly
Recently, I was reading about how the word “light” is used in Scripture.
According to Genesis, the earth was “a formless void: (NRSV); “formless and empty” (NIV); “chaos and emptiness” (Inclusive Bible). Empty…formless… chaos.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes my life can feel formless, empty, chaotic. When a loved one is seriously ill or dies, when a child or grandchild is going through a difficult life experience, when financial difficulties come, when a relationship ends, when a difficult diagnosis affects our health, when age catches up with us, when one we care about no longer recognizes us due to Dementia, when the job goes away, when the hopes and dreams we have never come to pass, we can each find ourselves in a place of emptiness, voidness, chaos.
But the author of Genesis goes on to say that during this void and chaos, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (NRSV); “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (NIV); “yet the Spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the waters” (Inclusive Bible). Wind of God swept…Spirit of God hovering… Spirit of God brooding…
I find that reassuring. Even in the face of emptiness, formlessness, chaos, God hovers over the void. God doesn’t ignore the emptiness of creation, God sweeps over, hovers, broods. God is there in the midst of the chaos and void. God is aware of what we are going through and is present. I like the way the Inclusive translation says that the earth was chaos and emptiness – yet the Spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the deep”. Things were a mess – yet God was there, hovering, brooding. Creation wasn’t alone and neither are we.
Verse 3 of the first chapter of Genesis says, “let there be light.” And light was there; filling the void, shining on the chaos. Light made it possible for all the rest of creation to take place. Without light, we can’t see the dangers, the pitfalls, or the light at the end of the tunnel.
John 1:4-5 says, “In the Word was life, and that life was humanity’s light – a Light shines in the darkness – a Light that the darkness has never overtaken.”
In John 8 Jesus declares, “I AM the light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light of life”. And in Matthew 5 he says to his followers, “You are the light of the world”. I had never really connected those two things before. Jesus is the light of the world that shines in the darkness, and we are to be the light to the world. We are to continue to shine the light of Jesus into the world around us.
But then I started thinking about light and how it works. I turned off the light in the room and looked at the darkness for a moment; then I turned the light back on. I noticed that as I did, I didn’t look at the light itself but at what I could now see because of the light. I thought about how light is not so much something we see directly, but more about something by which we see the things around us. When the light came on, for just a second, I looked at the light; then I looked at what was around me. Without the light, I couldn’t see those things. But, with the light I could see them, perhaps in a new way.
Then I went back to Jesus saying he is the light of the world and that so are we the light of the world. As I pondered that, I began to realize that Jesus is the light which lights us and enables us to be the light to others. We need to look at Jesus until we can look out at the world with his kind of eyes and reflect his light to all. His light shines on those around us and all of creation so that we can see people and the cosmos from his point of view. Not ‘us and them’ or ‘those others’ or even ‘the least of these,’ but as people created and loved by God just as equally as God loves you and me. Creation becomes not just something to be used up or taken advantage of, but something God created and loves and has asked us to care for and celebrate. I hope that each time I turn on a light or wake up in the morning to the light of a new day I can remember that I can reflect and be the light of Jesus to everyone and everything.
Donna
email Donna at: donna@sotpmail.com