I’ve told you many times that I love living
here. I love how you can go out into the country and see for fifteen
miles or more. I love all the wildlife you can see: the geese, the pheasants, and the deer--well,
when they don’t run in front of my car, anyway. I love watching the crops
grow. I especially love it when the
sunflowers are in bloom. And I love the
people here, too. We have some of the
best people anywhere in the small towns that make up the Wheatland Parish.
There’s only one thing I don’t like about living
here. Winter. The first day of
spring was a few days ago, and I thank God for that, because I do not like
winter. It’s not just the snow, although I don’t care for that. It’s not just the cold, although I don’t care
for that, either.
What it is, is the dark. In the middle of winter, we
have less than nine hours of sunlight. And that’s on the days when we can
actually see the sun--there are a lot of days in the winter when we cannot.
That makes for a lot of hours of darkness, and I don’t like that. I love it in the middle of summer, when it’s
still light past ten o’clock at night. But I don’t like it in the middle
of winter. It’s dark when I get up. It’s dark when I have breakfast. It’s still dark when I get to the church in
the morning. It’s dark when I have supper. Dark, dark, dark. I do not like that at all.
Most people don’t. Statistics show that people tend
to get more depressed in the winter, when they spend so many hours in
darkness. There’s a name for it--Seasonal Affective Disorder. You’ve probably heard of that. Human beings were not designed to love the
darkness. We were designed to love the light.
We talk about Jesus as the light of the world. We
were designed to love that light, too.
We were designed to love Jesus Christ. In our reading for tonight,
the Apostle Paul says that we are to live as children of light. That’s
another way of saying we should live as children of God. He talks about being the fruit of the light,
which means to be the fruit of the Lord. And he defines what being fruit
of the light means--all goodness, righteousness, and truth. That’s what you and I were designed to
be.
But it’s not easy to be that,
is it? It’s not easy for a few reasons.
One is just our inherent sinful
nature. Paul says, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in
the Lord.” But it’s easy to slip back into darkness, you know? And the thing is, we’re so good at justifying
ourselves. We’re so good at telling ourselves that what we’re doing is
good and right. We tell ourselves that,
and we convince ourselves that it’s true. Basically, what we’re doing is
telling ourselves that darkness is light.
Deep down, we know better. We
know what we’re doing is not light. We
know that darkness is not light. But we push that thought away. We refuse to let it in. We allow ourselves to believe what we want to
believe, even though we know better. We
allow ourselves to believe that darkness is light, even though we know it’s
not.
But another reason it’s not
easy is the world. The world is pretty dark right now. When I say that, of course, the first thing
that comes to mind right now is the coronavirus. But there were a lot of
problems before that. There was a lot of
flooding last year, and there are fears of flooding again this year.
There are a crops that never got harvested last year and are still out in the
fields. And of course, there have been
storms and earthquakes and all kinds of things happening in lots of
places. It’s hard to be fruit of the light in a world that seems so dark.
But Paul said something
else. He did not just say that we are fruit of the light. He did
not just say that we are children of light.
He said we are light. The very first verse of our reading
for tonight said, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the
Lord.”
That sounds nice, and it is,
but in a dark world it’s a challenge. It’s also a calling. We are called to be light. We are called to be light for ourselves, and
for our neighbors, and for the whole world.
But we say, well, how can I do
that? How in the world can I be light for the whole world? I’m just
one person. My little tiny light won’t
do anything.
But it will. And in fact,
the darker the world is, the more our lights are needed. Even if we think
all we have is a little, tiny light, it is needed. And the darker the world is, the more
effective our little tiny light will be.
Think of it this way. You
can even try this at home if you want to. Have you ever lit a candle in a
bright, well-lit room? That little candle does not seem to make any
difference at all, does it? In fact, if you were not looking right at it,
you would not even know that candle had been lit.
But have you ever lit a candle
in a dark room? What happens then?
It lights up the whole room, right? The darker the room is, the
more effect even a small light has. And the darker the world is, the more
effect our small lights can have.
Jesus was and is the
light of the world. But as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, you
and I are called to be a light for the world. That’s our challenge. That’s our calling.
So think about it. How
can you be a light in the world? If you don’t think you can light up the
whole world, how can you be a light in Gettysburg? Or Onida? Or Agar?
And if even that seems like it’s too much, then how can you be a light
for the people around you? How can you be a light for your
neighbors? How can you be a light for
your family?
Yes, it’s harder in this time
of isolation and fear. But it can be done. We just have to be more intentional about
it. We’re not seeing people casually, the way we normally do. So, we have to make an active decision that
we are going to find ways to be there for each other and to find out how we can
help each other.
Luckily, we have ways to do
that which people did not have years ago. One of them is what we’re doing
right now. Livestreaming? Facebook live? Not very many years ago,
everyone would’ve said what in the world is that? And now, here we are.
And there are all kinds of
other things. Facetime. Social
media. Texting. Email. Talking on the telephone. If you want to get really old school, you
could even write someone a letter! You say, well, who in the world writes
letters any more? But I can tell you
that if you actually took the time to write a letter and send it to someone,
the chances are you’d make their whole day.
There are all kinds of ways we
can be there for each other. There are all kinds of ways we can help each
other. The only limit to it is our
imagination. But where it starts, really, is with desire. It starts with a desire to be the people of
God. It starts with a desire to be light
in the Lord, as Paul says. If we have that desire, we will find a way to
this. It’s like the old saying: when we really want to do something, we find
a way. When we really don’t want to do
something, we find an excuse.
A time like this is a time when
our faith really gets tested. That’s not necessarily something we
like. For one thing, our faith being
tested inherently means there’s some bad stuff going on, and nobody wants
that. But there’s another reason, too.
You know, in the Lord’s Prayer,
we say, “lead us not into temptation”. There are some people who believe
that line is better translated “lead us not to a time of testing”. We ask
not to be led to a time of testing because we know there’s a chance we may fail
the test.
But that’s something we don’t
get to choose. We are in a time of testing, whether we want to be or
not. And so, this is when we find out.
This is when we find out if we truly do trust God. This is when we
find out whether we truly follow Jesus Christ.
We talk all the time about important our faith is. This is when we
get the chance to prove it.
Jesus’ command to love our
neighbors is always important. In fact, he said it was one of the two
most important commandments there are, along with loving God. But loving
our neighbors is never more important than now.
Being a light is never more important than now, when the world seems so
dark.
So, will we pass the
test? Will we love our neighbors?
Will we decide we want to be there for each other and love each
other? Will we be so determined to do that, that we will find a way, even
in these times? Will we be the lights
the world needs in these dark times?
We are called to fruit of the light. We are called to
be children of light. We are called to be the light. We are
called to be light for the world, just as Jesus is the light of the world.
The world looks dark now. Let’s all be the light.
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