Light
/He came as a witness to testify to the light. -John 1:7
John the Baptist is one of my favorite people in the Bible. There are a lot of things I love about him :
He never beat around the bush.
He gave up just about everything except his trust in God
He didn’t care at all about how his hair looked.
I also love how he is always depicted pointing away from himself, demonstrating his radical humility. He clearly knew he was not star of the show, but that didn’t stop him from feeling confident that he’d been called by God to testify.
At a recent clergy bible study Bishop Rob commented that while most of the time we’re concerned with how our front yard looks from the street, John the Baptist is far more interested in what we hide in the back yard, or stuff into cluttered closets, or hide away in dark bottom drawers. John invites us to bring everything out into the light of Christ - even those things we keep hidden away out of complacency, fear or shame. He shows up every year to remind us to do some serious Advent cleaning and de-cluttering, to dig into the messes of our lives and the hardness of our hearts and then to turn ourselves back onto a better road. John testifies to the light in order to help us to uncover and excavate the light that is already planted deep within us - the light that cannot be overcome by darkness. The light that can’t ever be overcome by anything at all. But that sometimes we nonetheless do our best to bury.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul wrote that we are children of the light, and that we belong to the day. It is none other than Christ, the light of the world, who has claimed us as his own. We belong to the day. We belong to this amazing light that can never be overcome. Can we live as though we really trested that? Can we trust that we are not only recipients, but bearers of this awesome light? That we can throw off the layers of fear and doubt - and shine?
Every year John the Baptist invites us enter the wilderness, and face our fears and our doubts and our sins. He invites us to shed the detrimental beliefs, attitudes and habits that keep us from turning toward Christ’s light.
So as you put up Christmas lights that can be seen from the street this year, make sure to also take some time exploring the darker corners of your life, so that the light can penetrate into the shadows and help you shine as the daylight you were created to be.
