Monday, February
10, 2020
Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. I’ve promised it once, and I’ll promise it again: I will obey your righteous regulations. I have suffered much, O Lord; restore my life again as you promised. Lord, accept my offering of praise, and teach me your regulations. My life constantly hangs in the balance, but I will not stop obeying your instructions. The wicked have set their traps for me, but I will not turn from your commandments. Your laws are my treasure; they are my heart’s delight. I am determined to keep your decrees to the very end. Psalm 119:105-112[2]
Let’s face it, when you have some
age on you the light can grow a little dim for weary eyes. My Dad almost made it to triple digits and
his eyesight was amazing. Dad had been
wearing glasses since his forties, and when he reached 70, he awakened one
morning and, as older people do, the first thing he did was reach for the
glasses. He put them on, and, as he
looked around everything was fuzzy. Dad
removed the glasses to clean them and the world snapped into view. He was blessed with what his doctor termed “second
sight”[3].
A physical blessing is a gift that
is always right in front of you. Our
pain and disabilities are front-burner issues, and when one is blessed with a
pain solved, or weakness dissolved, the world snaps into alignment; new
possibilities are in focus.
It is much the same in the
spiritual realm, only deeper. The Psalmist
describes a light in dark places. More
dramatic than the alleviation of physical pain, the enlightening of spiritual
understanding is a medicine to the soul.[4]
In the book of Isaiah, the prophet
laments how much his generation (perhaps like ours) was walking in darkness,
but foreshadows the coming of light for our souls:
So there is no justice among us, and we know nothing about right living. We look for light but find only darkness. We look for bright skies but walk in gloom. Isaiah 59:9
And Jesus clearly picked up Isaiah’s
words and drove them home to the point:
Jesus…said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” John 8:12
These days there’s a lot of spiritual
glop that is supposed to pass for enlightenment but offers little
in the way of hope. People dabble in
spiritual vacuity that is supposed to place them on a higher plane but, in the
end, it is hollow and shallow. When the
bubble bursts emptiness fills the room.
That our generation is like Isaiah’s
can hardly be disputed; the world is deeply divided, and America is truly the
world’s leader in that commodity. And
what it will come down to for each soul is whether there is a hunger and thirst
for the true light of heaven, or the darkness of momentary comfort.
For
You Today
