Supernatural Streetlights

The local church that we attend, Faith Community, San Diego, is doing some remodeling after many decades with basically the same decor and site layout. It’s not that the superficiality of fashion is greatly important, but safety and clean upgrades are meaningful to those who gather to worship in a fellowship that highlights the faces of those around us as we look to Jesus for His sustenance.

One of the things that a lot of people seem agreed upon is the necessity of the replacement of the lights in the sanctuary. They are looking a somewhat rickety after their 30 years or so of luminous travail! Worship and media will be enhanced by an improved design that incorporates better optics and a positioning that lights-up all the areas where ministry can take place.

But as I think about the changes, something about the old lights has touched my heart. Each one is a kind of a simple chandelier with a few cylindrical golden glass tubes coming off the ironwork, with a cross at the bottom. Many people have found Jesus under this glow, we have sung and cried, laughed and known silence, been healed and held in prayer, and we have wonderfully told the stories of our testimonies beneath the hard-working little lamps, placed a bit too high in the vaulted ceiling.

I wasn’t trying to be sentimental, but the lights made me think about what I really love about our church. And that is this: That it is the people-lights in our church that don’t respect a wall, or the height of a ceiling, or the design of the light cylinder, that makes my heart race to be together with these people of God each week.

They cast their beams into the city that we inhabit every day. We don’t need either rickety or elegant fixtures to spread abroad the love of Christ from a street corner. We need Jesus’ words rising from our hearts with the understanding that comes from Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” The real lights of the Church will penetrate, with a fervent passion, the streets where we live--where people long for a break in the unrelenting darkness. We must be a people that bring the healing warmth of light to the open wounds of the brokenness in the darkest places of the city--far from the hospitality of our well-positioned lamps in a building called the church.

In Daniel 2:22 it is said of the Lord: “It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, And the light dwells with Him.”

The darkness alive in the everyday world of the city is something that I cannot fully know, but the Lord does, and He takes us into the places of hidden things to redeem them by the Light that always dwells with Him as He accompanies us.

We don’t yet have a new design for our lamps at the church building, but I thought that I might submit for consideration such a one as the photo I’ve posted. This way we could constantly remember the brokenhearted with a light appropriate to the streets, and alleys, and dumpsters, and the evil that can lurk there, and we would know that the wattage necessary to reveal the Light in such darkness is always that of the supernatural Light of the Sun of Righteousness.

A Light Lesson

As a child I spent many hours sequestered on a hillside, under a tree, in a bedroom, reading fables. I liked the ones that clearly detailed the moral to the story at the end. I think that was because they seemed so nicely complete to me, and that they were usually so far out of my grasp to understand. This meant that I was promised to have so much more to learn in this great wide and ready-to-be-explored world.

In today’s post I’ve written just such a fable about my unending curiosity over the tiny featherweight giants that buzz through our world known as the hummingbirds. You will find a moral at the end of the tale, but I know it won’t be too high for your understanding. It will simply be illuminating about an ounce-weight little bird and what his God-given neon colors of light can teach us:

Once upon a time there was a regal hummingbird named Renaldo the Resplendent. In all the field guides of the land of Buzzburgh it was said that he was the most highly-stylized in coloration, that his bill was the envy of all the great sword-designers of the kingdom, and that he was dubbed the most truculent of warriors due to his monumental size, being that he was only an inch and a half long. His type was that known as the Fuchsia-Tufted Star Throat, and as you will see he easily fit his description, and more, as he used all the weaponry available to his species to overcome a foul foe.

Renaldo was also known as a quite protective father, although as a warrior he was not overly indulgent with his little son Reny II, since this would be unseemly for one so valiant.

One day he saw Reny hovering over a brilliant zinnia patch. He watched his son’s aerial maneuvers, and marveled at the silly youngster wasting all his energy just displaying his flight talents rather than harvesting the energy necessary to his very existence that resided in the beckoning flower-patch. Reny somersaulted with high-bounding dives only to swing back up into the ethers, inscribing hummingbird calligraphy all over the heavens to the delight of his gemlike bird audience.

Soon his father saw Reny drop to a flower stem to rest his magnificent flight muscles after his grand, but dangerous, display. Then, immediately, Renaldo spotted the ever-so-present danger to his flight-happy son. Right below him on the zinnia branch was a massive praying mantis, who was know as Gorgon the Shapeshifter--gigantic, and most terrible of all the fright-monster insects of Buzzburgh.

The creature could mimic himself as just another branch of a plant, and he could even add the lush look of a leaf to his disguise. The other trait that the beast was known for was that he enjoyed hummingbirds for his dinner, when he could catch them, which was rare since they were usually much faster than he was. Today though Reny was not that fast, as a matter of fact, he was exhausted and winded just below the head of the most brilliant of the fuchsia-colored zinnias.

Gorgon’s leaf like massive arm reached-out for the entirely spent Reny. Renaldo darted to the aid of his depleted son and parried Gorgon with his swordbill, but the monster hurled him back to an adjacent ditch. Renaldo was not used to such degradation, but from his dismal landing place he saw a flashing beam of dazzling sunlight playing off the fuchsia hues from the bloom over Reny’s tired head. He easily saw the resonance in this spectacle with his own gorgeous feathering, as he too had a star-like spot of fuchsia on his throat.

Quickly he surveyed the situation and realized that his ounce-weight could not come against the mammoth Gorgon no matter how great his fencing skills were. But Renaldo also knew how to use light to attract (This was how he had won Reny’s mother.), and he knew how to use it to distract, as well. He calculated the distance that he would have to fly and hover to triangulate the sun’s flow off of his stunning throat and through the perfectly colored zinnia-head. He sped to that point. The light was like an explosion of flames all around the confused and bewildered Gorgon, who fell from his clever hiding place into a puddle of mud. The Shapeshifter was now nothing but a mud-blob, and was having no small amount of difficulty extracting himself from the gooey mess.

The permanently color-blinded Gorgon decided upon a dinner of foliage that evening, after he regained his vision from the flaming encounter. From that day on the monster could only eat the vegetation along the low-lying ditches of Buzzburgh!

Renaldo and Reny swerved and angled off to a nearby lilac bush where Reny learned the lesson of reflected light from the grand and brilliant Renaldo, and he only wanted to become as wise as his great pilot-father, at both harvesting nectar, and just being entirely lovely for the delight of all the citizens of Buzzburgh.

From that day hence Reny was always faster and wiser than Gorgon, or any of his ogre-like brothers, and one day he was even named Renaldo II for all the sparkling lights that he dazzled throughout the entire land with his shining plumage. Applause filled the heavens for how the sunbeams played off Reny’s daytime star-throat. He loved being a light-dancer even as he fed upon the nectar that had been placed there just for him and his dazzling family at the rainbow colored zinnia-garden.

MORAL OF THE STORY: When choosing weaponry against an enemy who wants to take your life, remember the wise use of the power of light.

The Scripture says it in such a wonderfully direct way in Romans 13:12 (Amplified Version): “The night is far gone and the day is almost here. Let us drop (fling away) the works and deeds of darkness and put on the (full) armor of light.”

Dusk and Dawn

“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place . . . ?” Job 38:12

The passages at the end of the book of Job, where God addresses Job, are some of the most phenomenal pieces of poetry and truth ever written. Each stunning phrase follows so rapidly upon the other, that they are breathtaking—making for light-headedness when I read them. But I had to pause on this one as I looked at this image that I took of dusk’s gate in the drifting shadows.

Dawn and dusk are both such times of intensity in any day. The qualities of light dance in different ways when the sun is low to the horizon. Photographers search out the most riveting places in the world during these two periods of daylight to frame its magnificence. In Job, the Lord says that we can’t command their timing, nor can we plot their arrival and departure. And this is so true. How laughable, really, to think that we could control them. But I do know that by our familiarity with them they have become strong metaphors for us. Dawn is the hope-filled start of something new, and dusk is its closing.

For many years I have awakened watching the new day’s sun filter through the leaves as it rises, and I have also thrilled to the adventure of finding its expressive lights at dusk. I realize that in appearance they can have great similarities, even though in meaning they are quite different to us. It struck me that I could actually walk along the streets of dusk or dawn, and not know which light it was, without analyzing the direction of its emanation. The quality of the breaking morning light has its twin in early evening’s closing canvas.

I wondered if the Lord had a message in this revelation. Is it possible that in the Lord’s planning of the sunrise He has placed in its luster a tinge of dusk, so that we won’t cling too tightly to control it? Could it be that in dusk’s sienna paintings that He has placed dawn’s glowing belief in the newness of promise? Is it possible that the Lord has found our metaphors to be too one-dimensional? We can find hope in a closing that points to more wholeness. And we can be rooted and grounded in the seemingly wild exhilaration of new possibilities by knowing that there will be a blessed closure.

It also says from Job’s sainted lips in 7:4: “ When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ but the night continues, and I am continually tossing until dawn.”  How honest Job was with us in his book that he said had to be written. When I find myself awake and tossing in the night watch like Job, I now want to remember dusk’s lit-up pledge that the dawn will bring a new assurance of meaning. The One who sets the lights has left a message in both day’s beginning and day’s end for us to hope in His reliability. In the deepest part of the evening His lullaby to us is to believe for His next light. They will return with His truth and His warming rays having the consistency of day following night. I just don’t know of any promise more profoundly telling than His readiness to give us discernment by the return of His light!

My prayer is for the Job within me to be swaddled in His light, both morning and evening, and for the stretches in between, to watch for His stunning resonance off the horizon—it will bring with it a curving gate that opens onto expanses of bright significance.

A Steady Eye

 

There are times when the light, during any time of the day, can astound me as it illuminates Scripture. Let me show you the verse that this sunset image flickered at me asking for illustration: "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men." (Psalm 11:4)

When I saw this eye in the heavens heading towards its setting place, I felt great peace. There was no terror, nor intrusion over being watched. It was an eye that was steady for the truth, and I needed that in a day that had been darkened with empty talk. My camera has taught me how important it is to have a steady hand, but these last lights on this day had brought me the message of a steady eye and how important it is to a having a vision.

The steady eye of the Lord watching over me by His goodness informs all the contours upon which His light falls to my great delight. And I want to see through His vision for me. How can I learn to have a steady eye? How can I love with the grace and truth of such a vision? I can know that His eyes are the protection that can never come from any other view of my world. They are the love that is the overflow of all others.

When I thought about a test from His eyelids I tightened up a bit. Tests can bring the pacing anxiety of performance--the desire to get it perfect. And then I thought about what it is that the eyelids do--they blink to keep the eye moist for better clarity of sight. He really wants to see me--at my deepest places--where my heartstrings are tied to the eyes, those open panes to our soul. My life, and how He has made me, is such a fascinating story to Him that the One who is the Storyteller and the Story wouldn't want to miss a piece of mine. And so His beautiful blinking eyelids keep me in focus and help me to see better--not to pass a test, but to learn better how to probe His Truth--the very person of His Son named Jesus. Passing a test is nothing if there is not wisdom that flows from it.

A halo in the sky, around the golden sun setting gave me the glorious message of His steady eye. I may never get to see it again in this way, but the capture here was given to share. May you revel in the Eyes that love you from His holy temple. May your story be His grand devotional for each new dawn and dusk!