IN THE LIGHT

God is light.

He can never be in shade or darkness. There is no darkness in Him. Light dispels darkness. The only part of any object that can ever cast a shadow or be in darkness, is that part which is turned away from the light.

Christ is the door between us and God - the only way for us to become part of the Light. Through Christ we can come so close to God that we can be totally absorbed by His Light so that there is no longer any darkness in us. How can we get so close to Christ as to be one with God as He is one with His Father? Thru personal fellowship with Him.

              "...which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked

               at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

              The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the

              eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to

              you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with

              us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."

              1 John 1:1-3

What is fellowship? I looked up the words "fellow" and "fellowship" in the dictionary and found "a room mate, a replica of, a fellow traveller, a fellow citizen, a co-worker, a fellow soldier, a participator, a sharer, a friend".

If we examine our lives how close are we to the Light? How close is the fellowship we have with the Triune God?       

John writes in 1 John 1:5:

               "...God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship

               with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we

               walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and

              the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

In Durban, years ago, I had a friend who was blind. Or, let me rephrase that - she was totally blind in one eye and could distinguish between light and total darkness with the other eye. But she was the first one to reply if someone asked the time and the first one to notice if there was a car door not closed properly whilst I was driving.

She had a guide dog as well as a white cane to help her get along, and she was as independant as she could possibly be. She lived by herself in a first floor flat, and worked as a switchboard operator at a financial institution in Pinetown, a town approximately 20 km from Durban.

She was therefore functioning to the best of her ability, and almost as any other person with sight, but that changed not the fact that she was in fact 98% blind and in darkness.

One morning as she left her flat for work, her neighbour shouted, "Where are you going?". "To work", she replied. "What! With only a petticoat and no skirt?" the neighbour asked. Although she could feel the material against her legs, she was unable to see that she had forgotton to put on her skirt. She needed light and sight for that.

She lived in a block of flats next to a hotel. Many evenings drunks from the hotel would get no further than the pavement in front of her block of flats and would sit their in their drunkenness and be a nuisance to the tenants of the flats. My friend would bump against them coming in and going out and chase them away.

On one occasion I dropped her off at the flat in the evening. As soon as she started crossing the road to get to her flat, I heard her talking out loud and swinging her walking stick. When she got to the opposite side, she started hitting a black refuse bag sitting on the pavement and telling it to get up and go!

You see, although she THOUGHT she saw another drunk sitting on the pavement, she was wrong!

              "If we claim to have fellowship with Him, but walk in the darkness, we lie and do not

               live by the truth." 1 John 1:6

Sometimes we also think we are walking in His light, when in fact we are stumbling around in the darkness.

Thank You, Lord, that we may approach Your throne of glory through the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You, that, as did the Father of the prodigal son, You see us coming from afar, and run and embrace us. Help us to walk in Your light daily.