Worship - Sunday at 10:30AM
Bible Study - Wednesday at 6:30PM
2007-02-18 Communion Dedication - Baldwin Christian Church
NO PART DARK
Luke 11:33-36
33. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.
34. The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
35. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.
36. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
When I was about eight years old, I spent the night at a friend's house. This was the first time I had been in that house, and I bedded-down in the basement. We had spent that evening goofing around and drinking sodas, so sometime in the middle of the night, I needed to go to the bathroom.
Well, it was dark, so dark that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I shuffled ever so slowly toward where I thought the stairs were. Couches, coffee tables, support beams, and sleeping kids; all of these things I bumped into for the next ten minutes or so. I just couldn't find the stairs, and I really needed a restroom.
After what seemed like an eternity, my toe crashed into the bottom stair, and I found a handrail to guide me. I was home free, or so I thought. When I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door, I now had barely enough light to see my hand in front of my face, and I could see that I was in the middle of a hallway. Now my only dilemma was whether to start groping and grasping to the left or to the right.
That's when it happened; I heard a deep growling sound, and I remembered that my friends had recently got a Great Dane puppy. He was jet black, with very tall, pointy ears, and by this time, he was about a year old. This puppy was almost as tall as me, and he wasn't very familiar with me. When he growled, it was deep, and it didn't seem like he stopped to take a breath. At the very moment my eyes adjusted enough to make out his silhouette at the end of the hall, he started running toward me, still growling. I could say that I didn't trust him, but that wouldn't be completely honest. I was scared, and I jumped back into the stairwell, closing the door behind me. I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. I didn't get to go up to the restroom until morning.
Jesus says the light of my body is my eye. If I want to be free from groping and stumbling about in my life, I need to keep my eye single. It seems like every thing is over-complicated in the world today, and I believe that is intentional, to make us fear all the wrong things. If I had light in that hallway, I could have beaten that Great Dane to the bathroom, or maybe he wouldn't have looked so scary to me. If I had light in my heart, maybe I would have charged right back at him, growling some myself, and maybe he wouldn't have felt so tough. Instead, I spent the next ten minutes of my life groping and stumbling back to my sleeping bag. I didn't use the power I had over that scary dog because I didn't have light inside or out.
The world wants you to be afraid of everything, and over-complicate everything, but we have a light that is found in the Word of God, to keep us from stumbling, and give us the way to go.
Let's concentrate on Christ crucified, and all that means to us, and let's live by His light.