Thought for Today
Genesis 1:3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
John 1:3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
John 9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
“Today Christ is heart-shocking you and me to become ever-flowing channels of the miracle of light.” (These Days, September 15, 2025)
Watching the television news or reading the newspaper headlines are about all the “heart-shocking” my heart can sustain safely. I do not think they are examples of what that author was thinking. But, I was fascinated by the idea of God’s children being “ever-flowing channels of the miracle of light.” How are your channels flowing?
Light and light-imagery are mainstays of scripture. The word light appears more than 200 times in the Bible. John’s gospel especially captures the “miracle of light.” “John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” As a Christian, I can certainly appreciate Jesus, the Christ, as the light of all people and his incarnation as God’s miracle to accomplish the salvation of God’s Creation.
There are those days, however, when the darkness seems to be winning, to be overcoming the light of the world. Days when those newspaper headlines and television news stories seem to be revealing the darkness gaining the upper hand. There are days when my mind ponders whether we are hearing “Matthew 24:6 . . . of wars and rumors of wars . . .” At such times I remember the rest of that verse, “. . . see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”
If I am not to be alarmed in the midst of all this, what then is my response as a Christian? I believe that devotional author today captured my Christian response and offered me and all of you a challenge. We are to become “ever-flowing channels of the miracle of light.”
Now that we have the challenge, how do we translate that challenge into thoughts, words and actions? As with almost everything in life, we begin by looking at the light we are referencing. We are properly told by our ophthalmologists never to look directly at the sun. To do so potentially would damage our eyes, impair our vision.
As a minister, I will tell you that we should always look directly at the Son. Rather than damage our eyes and our vision, looking directly at the Son will clear our eyes and inspire our vision. The true miracle for us as Christians is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God. Turning once again to John, we know that “3:15 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The prophet Micah long ago wrote, “6:8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” As a Christian, I know that to understand Micah’s words, to translate those words into a pattern for my own life, I only need look at Jesus. Jesus doesn’t directly quote Micah or Isaiah, who wrote “56:1 Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.” Instead, Jesus lived those words.
In his mortal life, in his ministry, in his sermons and lessons taught, Jesus provided each of us a living example of what it means to do justice, love kindness and of walking humbly with God. If we look directly at the Son, if we live out the life Jesus modeled for us, we will truly “become ever-flowing channels of the miracle of light.”
When we do that, the darkness will recede, the television news reports and the newspaper headlines will no longer seem threatening and horrifying. For Christians, it is not a lack of knowing what to do, the challenge is in translating our knowledge into constant, deliberate application of that knowledge into daily living. The challenge is there; we just need to live up to the challenge.
Stay safe, widen and deepen your channels, trust God,
Pastor Ray