Light it Up part 1
I love the theme of light in the Bible. God IS light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. So that's where I wanted to start year four of Ranting. And I want to start this series with John 1:4, "In him was life; and the life was the light of men." I don't think we've really even scratched the surface of this glorious truth. But that's all I want to do today. I want to scratch the surface. Maybe go a little deeper than usual and try to help us see things differently. I guess you could say I'm weird because I always seem to see things differently. But I guess if you're reading my Rant you're either ok with that, or you want to argue. (I'm not going to argue with you... just so you know.) Ok. In Jesus is life. Think about that. Life. True life. Real life. Abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life. All these ideas we have about what happens after we die, and MAN do we like to focus on that, and we seem to miss the point that IN Him IS life. Everlasting life doesn't start when you die. It HAS no beginning and no end. It always was and always will be. If we went back a few verses in the book of John we would see that, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). There has never been a time when God wasn't there. I know that sometimes it feels like it... because the book of Genesis tells us that in the beginning the heaven and the earth (us, the mind and the body) was dark and void and without form. But then God spoke. He said, "Let there be light." In the beginning was the Word. Light. Life. Love. Jesus. God was always there, even when we couldn't see Him. Even when we were hiding from Him, or running from Him. He never left us and He never forsook us. Even when Adam and Eve were cast out (for lack of a better term) of the garden of Eden... God went with them. It wasn't, "You're over here and I'm over here and we're separate." There is no separation, and there has never been any separation. Jesus IS life. And His life is the light of men. Because we don't just let Him shine ON us, we let Him shine IN us and THROUGH us and AS us! We don't try to live His life or shine His light. Nobody can live Jesus' life except Jesus. The glorious part is that He lives His life in us! He dwells in us. Which means light dwells in us. We are the light of the world, and we shine wherever we go. We don't PRODUCE the light--by trying really hard to be like Jesus, or anything like that--we simply let the light that IS Jesus shine forth out of us! Another way to say it is "This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise" (Isaiah 43:21). Andother way to say it is that He is the vine and we are the branches. We don't PRODUCE the fruit, we just bear it--or carry it--to those who are hungry. So, to stay on my theme for today, we don't shine by trying really hard to shine. We simply believe that Jesus--the light of the world--is shining in us. He lit us up and now we can't do anything else BUT shine!