Scripture: Ephesians 5:8-14 (NRSV)
I stretch out my arm just far enough to pull down the blind with one finger. As I peek through the slit out the window, I see a familiar sight.
More snow.
It’s morning again and we’ve been dumped on once more. We are cold. We are tired. We are ready for this long and dreary winter to have its final word.
Ephesians chapter 5 is no leisurely walk in the park. Paul opens by urging the church in Ephesus to imitate God, taking special note of our nature as beloved children. He goes on, however, to outline behavior deemed unacceptable for children of God. Fornication, impurity, greed, vulgarity, idolatry, and on and on Paul goes. In the closing half of the chapter, the church in Ephesus is instructed on how to function as members within a Christian household. Readers today grapple fiercely with these words, constantly asking difficult questions about one’s appropriate place in the world, the Church and the home as a beloved child of Christ.
Yet in the midst of these often unsettling words and these long winter days, I sense that we, as followers and light bearers of Jesus Christ, are called to be fascinating. Verses 8-14 lay out our journey in front of us – a journey from darkness into light. And when I ask myself why it is that I am drawn to the light, why it is that I crave it so, I think: I am drawn to the light because it fascinates me far more than the darkness does. I am drawn to the light not because it badgers me into recognizing my transgressions, but because it shows me something much more beautiful and far more whole than these transgressions.
As we trudge through the final days of winter toward the light and hope of springtime, may we continue to be fascinated by the light of Christ and fascinate others with our encounters.
Scripture: Ephesians 5:8-14 (NRSV)
For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— 9for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. 10Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. 11Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; 13but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”