His Marvelous Light

Guest author Bethany Williams joins us in the last week of our series on The Lord Is My Light, inviting us to step into God’s marvelous light.

In church one Sunday last month, my 12 year old son turned to me after the closing prayer and asked, “Did you know we wouldn’t see color if we didn’t have light?”  All the way down the balcony stairs and the church hall, he explained the way light provides color because of different wavelengths, some of which are absorbed and some reflected.  I already knew the physics, and I think his older sister gave me the same lesson two years ago, but I loved listening to him explain with his enthusiasm of fresh understanding.  We talked about color, our senses, what new things we might be able to see in heaven one day, and what we may be missing now that we don’t even know.  The very next day my friend Jennifer asked me to guest write on reflections of light and darkness in Scripture, which just made me smile at God’s timing.

During Sunday morning worship today, due to a technical accident, the sanctuary lights went out for a couple of seconds.  Everyone laughed and the preacher, quoting an old anecdote from Dr. Gardner Taylor, said, “It’s okay, we can see Jesus in the dark.”  Later in the service, the preacher proceeded to preach on I Peter, including 2:9.  Now, full disclosure, this preacher is my husband, but he had no memory of how, weeks ago, I had chosen I Peter 2:9 to write on this day.  I smiled again at God’s timing.

So it is with God’s light; when we begin to look for God’s light, we see it more and more.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (I Peter 2:9-10).

I Peter 2:9-10 is beautiful to read.  It is encouraging to see our identity as God’s chosen people.  We love reading and hearing the adjectives—chosen, royal, holy.  And the phrase that makes our hearts swell—marvelous light.  These verses remind us who we are and how we live, as God’s people of the light.  We may have started in the dark, but we spend our lives proclaiming how God called us out to place us instead in His light.

And this light is nearly too good to place into words; it’s marvelous and full of mercy.  It’s not a part of our lives over there in the drawer to pull out for a few hours on Sunday morning.  This is the light by which we live our entire lives.

In this same chapter from Peter, we read that this all seems like foolishness to those outside of the light.  Jesus, our cornerstone, is rejected and considered an offense to many. (I Peter 2:7-8)

While our children played at a park, a friend who I had been telling about Jesus asked me very pointedly how much I care if my child grows up to practice Christianity.  I got the feeling she thought the right answer for a parent would be to let children find  whatever “spiritual path” they felt like.  I was so gobsmacked that I rambled a good bit as I tried to explain how dearly I desire for my children to always know Jesus.  I wish I had better prepared for such a question ahead of our playdate at the park.  Perhaps I would have had handy this C.S. Lewis quote from The Weight of Glory: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

This love of Jesus, this marvelous light He has called us into, changes how we see everything.

I wish I had thought to tell her in that moment of how I began praying for my children last year: “Please, Lord, keep them in your Light.”  With the many darknesses our whole world has experienced in recent years, with so many darknesses within the culture around them, with the humility that I do not know all the days in their futures, I’ve begun to pray with imagery of God’s light surrounding my children.  I pray they can always see Jesus in the dark.

It’s important to take seriously that living in God’s light requires obedience, sacrifice, and suffering.  Living in His light does not necessarily always feel the same as the song refrain “walking on sunshine.”  We know from the rest of Peter’s letters and his life that he did not mean it would be easy.  This life of faith in God’s light is better than easy, it is marvelous and full of mercy.

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Bethany Williams is a teacher, encourager, advocate, and writer.  She loves teaching high school Theology and focusing on her four children at home.  She is happily a clergy spouse, adoptive and biological mom, and treasures a little knack for eliciting laughter in church small groups.