Tuesday, June 27, 2006
This Little Light of Mine
About a year ago I started taking our dog out for the last time at night. We take a minute and look up at the stars. I like to show him the big dipper. I often tell him, “It’s a good night for camping.” We can hear the creek below, the usual crickets – the sounds of night. I can usually see a firefly here and there.

Last night, as I got ready for bed in the camper, I looked out the screened window. We are deep in the woods here. After 10 pm the only lights you see are from campfires, a sort of hazy cloud above the tops of the trees. At almost midnight I saw what seemed to be thousands of little green neon lights, dancing across the woods. They darted to and fro, showing up then disappearing, to reappear somewhere else. There were so many of them I didn’t know what they were. I was surprised when my husband told me they were fireflies. I watched them for a long time, captivated by the light show these little bugs were putting on. I wondered how many other campers were lying in beds all around me, showing their kids. How many were completely unaware what they were missing.

It struck me - we surely have as many fireflies in our own wooded backyard at home. They simply don’t show up. They are surrounded by the lights of a typical neighborhood. I realized my own light is often lost in the midst of the everyday, comfortable life I’m surrounded by. A life of bills, and obligations, appointments, trading the important for the urgent, my comfort zone. I don’t step out into the dark often.

We’ve been told we are to be the ‘light of the world’. Matthew 5:16 tells us to "let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds, and praise your Father." If I want the light I have inside me to be seen, I may need to step out past my own backyard, and venture into the dark a bit more. Maybe that means spending time at a homeless shelter; maybe stepping out in friendship to an unsaved neighbor. Or relative. A mission trip instead of a vacation. Falling asleep to the light of fireflies felt an awful lot like bedtime devotions, sans Bible, journal or pen. Just thousands and thousands of little lights, shining in the dark.

  posted at 11:28 PM
 





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