Hello, and welcome to the Living Room Blog. Last night Courtney spoke to us in week 2 of our Lent series, Journey to the Cross, and he spoke on Luke 11:33-36 – the lamp of the body. The takeaway for me was, in the same way last week I spoke about acknowledging distractions, to acknowledge the areas in our lives that are darkness.

Jesus’ desire for us is to be completely full of light so that it shines out in all that we do – that is what a healthy Christian life looks like (Living Room vision statement to promote healthy spiritual living).

But we know that often we are consumed by the darkness in our lives. You will know what those things are for you. The point of this passage in Luke is to remind us that Jesus is the Light of the World (which also ties to John 1) and we, as ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor 5:20) are light bearers. The light that is Christ Jesus shines in the darkness and destroys it (John 1 again). Darkness cannot overcome light (and don’t give me any black hole space stuff. Sure, Jesus knew about black holes, being that he is responsible for all creation. But he was hardly going to make that distinction to his disciples in the first century, was he?) The point is, wherever we see light and darkness on earth the light will always shine in the darkness. And the greater the light the less the darkness.

I just want to reiterate the hopeful challenge Courtney gave us last night: Verse 35 – “See to it, then, that the light inside you is not darkness.” You might choose to interpret this as “See it it that there is only light inside you,” since your Western, scientific based thinking is telling you that darkness can’t be light (or maybe that’s just me who’s thrown off by the wording and context of a foreign culture 2,000 years ago). It’s all the same.

See to it! Examine yourself. Allow the Holy Spirit to illuminate the dark spots in your heart, on your mind, in your soul and submit to the beauty and the power that is the Light of Christ. And let is shine!

St. Augustine was very big on this passage. He said,

“Our whole business in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.”

I think that sums up the passage nicely. May you be able to restore health to your eyes; the eyes that are the lamp of the body, that which shines the light of God, and opens our hearts to see God.

and here’s a video of a live performance from The Boss doing “This Little Light of Mine!” (fast forward to the 1 min mark if you don’t care about the band members coming out on stage.)