Let the Light In

““Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭22‬ ‭

Ah, lights.

I love them!

Lights are strung all around my wee house right now – in garlands. On trees. Around pictures and decor items. In lanterns.

Battery companies love me.

Thanks to them, my house is filled with light! It makes my heart very happy to sit in the evening with all these twinkling pretty luminaries lighting up my living space.

So it’s a good time to ponder the deeper significance of the season, and let the light in!

Christmas is a time to celebrate the arrival of the Light of the world – Jesus, the baby whose birth brought choirs of angels out in full force to celebrate! And since He is Light – pure and bright and able to point the way in a dark place, we add lights to our homes and places of business.

But we need to embrace the light to really grasp the full significance of the Christmas season. See, Jesus the baby went on to grow up and become Jesus the man. The man who traveled from place to place teaching the people about what God was really like in a day and age when the religious leaders were actually smothering Him with so many rules and regulations that they were effectively disguising Him and keeping the ordinary people from even seeing Him at all.

How very, very dark.

Jesus taught that it is our eyes – our minds and hearts and inner being that sees reality, perceives truth, makes sense of the chaos and confusion of the world around us. And if we see God as distant? Too busy to bother with us? Grumpy and cold?

Then we have missed the light altogether. And how dark is the darkness that denies who we are and who God is and why He bothered to come as a baby to a barn.

But – if our ‘eye’ is healthy?

If we are able to see the light, perceive that we are profoundly loved by a profoundly loving God who purposefully chose to leave the perfection of heaven to become one of us?

The eye which can see this light is healthy. The light which floods in when we choose to accept the truth will flood our entire being with light.

What is the difference between the eye which seed light and the eye that misses it?

Our will. Our choice. Our perception, the conclusions we draw from our experiences and exposures to truth. This determines the health of our eye – and the amount of light we will live in.

How’s your vision?

Let the light in this Christmas with me?

Father, the lights of Christmas point to You as the Light of the World. But our culture smothers the truth and skews our perception so that we often miss Your presence in this season. Open our eyes to see the light and flood our hearts with Your brilliance as we train our eyes to see You better. Amen.