More Than One Light?

John 3:16-21
According to Genesis 1 God created light on the first day and God saw that the light was good (Genesis 1:3-4). I have to think that in a pre-technological world light was almost always considered a good thing. It provided safety, the ability to work, warmth and much more. But we who live in a modern world know that light, like everything else that God created, can be perverted and made evil. One glance at Los Vegas at night is enough to know that not all light leads to God or to God’s will. That’s one of the factors that makes our reading from John 3 so challenging.

“For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light,” Jesus says, “so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (John 3:20-21). The light in this case, of course, is the light of God and God’s will for humanity. But what about all the other lights? As Simon and Garfunkel so famously sang, “And the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made…”. Truth is, some light in our world attracts evil like a candle attracts moths. Evil may even covet light, like the glare of publicity or notoriety or fame. This type of light has done little to help Charlie Sheen or many others like him.

So part of the struggle for us is not only living in the light, but determining which light we should live in: the light of God or the light of human sin and ambition. Left to our own choices we would probably all too often stray toward the sinful glare of the neon sign. But this is where Jesus comes back into the story for us. John has already told us that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5). By the same token the human glare of sin cannot overcome the light of the world created by God and found in God.

So when making choices in life it is important not only to listen to God, but also to reject the evil that confronts us regularly. May God bless us in this effort.

Prayer: Lord, you have created a good world full of joy and peace; help us to live as you intend us to do and to turn away from false prophets and the glare of sin. In Jesus’ name. Amen.