Illumination

In his novel, This Is Happiness, Niall Williams’ elderly narrator, Noe (pronounced No), remembers when electricity and light came to their little Irish village of Faha:

I’m aware here that it may be hard to imagine the enormity of this moment, the threshold that once crossed would leave behind a world that had endured for centuries, and that this moment was only sixty years ago.

Consider this: when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. Dust and cobwebs were discovered to have been thickening on every surface since the sixteenth century. Reality was appalling. It turned out Siney Dunne’s fine head of hair was a wig, not even close in color to the scruff of his neck, and Marian McGlynn’s healthy allure was in fact a caked make-up the color of red turf ash.

In the week following the switch-on, (store owner) Tom Clohessy couldn’t keep mirrors in stock, as people came in from out the country and bought looking glasses of all variety, went home, and in merciless illumination endured the chastening of all flesh when they saw what they looked like for the first time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Such is the illumination of the gospel—in a person’s heart, in a community, even in a culture. It’s no surprise, then, that John 3:19 says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” James 1:23-24 warns against the folly of looking in the mirror of God’s Word only to walk away without changing.

Astronomers have found the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy, called a quasar, located 12 billion light-years away. Quasars are the brightest objects in the cosmos, each consisting of a supermassive black hole that’s actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. But the black hole in this record-setting quasar is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen.

The gargantuan object stretches about seven light-years across, and it puts our sun’s luminosity to shame—the quasar shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than the star in our solar system.

Christian Wolf, lead author of the new study, said, “This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe. It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”

The black hole in the quasar is ravenous, consuming an amount of material equivalent to as much as 413 suns each year, and its black hole weighs about the same as 17 billion suns.

Wolf said, “It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second. He told reports that he doesn’t think anything will ever top this record for the universe’s brightest object.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This newly identified object is 500 trillion times brighter than our sun! How can anything be that bright? Thinking about this star gives us a sense of what the glorious presence of God is like, for Scripture says that God is a being who "lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see."

R. Douglas Fields writes about the vigorous activity of the brain during sleep:

Midway between our unconscious and conscious minds there is the altered mental state of sleep. If you should live to the age of seventy-five, you will have spent perhaps twenty-five of those years asleep. What goes on in your head during that block of your lifetime is largely beyond your knowledge or comprehension. It is a mysterious and still mystical chunk of ourselves.

If sleep were simply a nightly hibernation, a shutting down of our system in the dark, it could be understood as a reasonable strategy to save power for the daytime when we can be physically active. Sleep might be much like a laptop computer going into temporary hibernation to save resources during long periods of inactivity. But hibernation is hardly what goes on in the human brain during sleep. Sleep is a vigorous period of brain activity. It is an altered state, not an inert state.

There are cycles and patterns of activity during our nocturnal unconscious life shuttling enormous amounts of activity through different brain circuits. Events of the day—conscious and unconscious—are reexamined, sorted, associated, filed, or discarded. Memories are moved from one place in the brain and filed in different places in our cerebral cortex according to such factors as the type of information they contain, their connections to other events, and the internal emotional states of mind stamping them with significance.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We read repeatedly in Scripture that God spoke to one servant or another in a dream, or while they slept. He even spoke to unbelievers whose actions could impact his people. Why does God choose to speak to people while they sleep? Maybe it is because they are so busy or so distracted or so obstinate while awake that he speaks to them when they are asleep.

When was the last time you needed to use your cell phone as a flashlight, perhaps to look for something in the garage, read a menu at a darkly lit restaurant, or find something in the backyard at night? Why did you need it? Your answer probably includes some expression of dark or darkness.

As a sinner living with other sinners in a fallen world, you encounter darkness every day. While you may experience Instagram-worthy, sunny day picnic lunches, the reality is that life is more of a midnight walk through the woods. On any given day, you probably encounter more darkness than you do truth. So, to move forward without danger and get to where you are meant to go, you need something to light your way.

No passage gets at this need and God's provision better than Psalm 119:105: "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

It's significant that in Scripture, wisdom is often associated with a path. Are you going in the right direction? Are you veering off the path? Do you know where you are on the map? What's your compass? At the end of the day, wisdom is less about information than orienta­tion. All the geographic data points in the world are useless if we have no sense of north.

All of us wander in whichever nomadic direction our hearts choose, until we submit to the authority of God's good compass. He alone illuminates the path of wisdom. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God" (Ps. 14:1), and thus wanders aimlessly through the desert. The wise man, by contrast, lives a radically God-centered life.

Tozer puts it this way:

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There is much to look at in life. Our eyes flutter back and forth faster than they can properly process. Wisdom is focusing our gaze on God: looking to him, praying to him, zealously seeking after him. The Psalms constantly reinforce this: “My eyes are ever on the Lord” (Ps. 25:15. Ps. 141:8).

Singer-song-writer Sandra McCracken writes in an issue of CT magazine:

I live in an old house. Along with the charms of age, this old house has some surprises. One of these is the angle of the top three stairs leading to the bedrooms. One stair is too short, while the next one is too deep. It was a creative renovation solution from a previous owner who finished the attic, but it takes some getting used to.

When I need to take the stairs at night, I’m careful to grasp both handrails. Before bed the other week, my husband was plotting how he might install some subtle lighting on those tricky stairs for safety. While I could have just learned to deal with our dark hallway and the jagged steps, I was moved by his consideration of such a small thing.

In a similar way, God’s light on our path is a demonstration of his loving consideration for us. The often-memorized John 3:16–19, “For God so loved the world …” goes on to say that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ... Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light.” Before God broke in, we were in darkness. But he did not leave us in darkness. “He will not let your foot slip” (Ps. 121:3).

God’s marvelous light invites, illuminates, and sends us out (John 3:21; 1 Pet. 2:9). We, whom the Spirit lights, give light to each other and to the world, starting with the smallest things, like a light on the stairs.

One of the most iconic attractions when visiting New York City is Times Square. Times Square stretches out over five blocks along Broadway and then spreads out several blocks covering the entire theater district. What draws tourists to the area is not only the world-class theaters but the city lights.

Times Square is lit up by arguably the largest concentration of electronic billboards on the planet. According to Con Edison, the Theater District estimated that peak consumption is around 161 megawatts at one time. To put that into perspective, that is enough energy to power 161,000 homes. That is twice the amount of electricity used in all the Casinos in Las Vegas! That's a lot of power!

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his disciples to be salt and light; and collectively become that visible City on a Hill. When we connect to “his power" and gather as "his people" light will break through the darkness.

Elvis Presley used to frequent Lil Thompson’s Steakhouse in Tennessee. He was good friends with the owner who used to give him free food before he was famous. One night when he was at the height of his fame, the Steakhouse held the ultimate Elvis Presley impersonator contest. A large crowd arrived, including Elvis Presley himself. Elvis decided to take part and sat quietly at the back.

Elvis said confidently, “I’m going to mash this.” Lil was worried the place would go crazy when everyone realized it was Elvis. There was no need. He sang “Love Me Tender” to polite applause and came third place in the contest!

Possible Preaching Angle:

The judges missed the real thing when he was standing in front of them. So can we. We may think Jesus is a prophet, teacher, miracle worker, and dismiss him. He is the "real thing." The Son of God, and Savior.

Pastor Kevin Miller writes:

One year when I was working in publishing, we had our annual staff Christmas Party. There were about 150 people in the room seated around tables that held six or eight people. The CEO came in right before the program was about to start, so there weren’t many seats left.

He spied an empty seat at our table and came over. Very politely he said to the woman sitting by the empty seat, “May I sit here?”

She was waiting for someone from her department to come, and so she kind of scowled at him and said, “No, that’s taken.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, and walked away.

Once he got a few feet out of range, we burst out laughing and said to the woman: “You just dissed the CEO!” She said, “I did? What?” She had worked there for only two weeks, and she’d never seen his photo.

And that’s what happens when Jesus enters the world he’s created. Most people say, “Sorry, don’t recognize you. No seat for you. That one’s taken.”

Looking at our planet from space, astronauts and satellites tell a story of startling expansion and changes. It is the story of human progress told from a unique perspective. The greatest change can only be seen at night. Vast cities sprawl out in a web of lights. Astronaut Don Pettit explains in a Smithsonian documentary, “From the first time I flew to the last time, the main effect I saw on Earth was at night time, and it was the extent of lighting.”

Astronauts love taking pictures of cites at night. But there’s one city that stands out, not because of its size, color, or shape, but it’s brightness. Pettit says. “I like to refer to Las Vegas, tongue and cheek, as the beacon of humanity ... I don’t know if it’s the brightest city on earth but it is really, really bright.”

With billions of LED lights, and countless billboards and marquees, Vegas generates more light per square mile than any other city on the planet. At the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip, a beam of light is projected up into the night sky from the Luxor resort pyramid. Curved mirrors are positioned to collect light from 39 xenon lamps creating a single intense, narrow beam. This one light produces 42 billion candle watts of power. The beam is visible by planes flying over Los Angeles, 275 miles away. It is an unmissable beacon from the heart of the Mojave desert.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is sad but true that the identifying marks of our modern culture are often its cravings and excesses packaged in bright artificial light. In contrast, Christ, Christians, and churches are the true lights in a very dark world.

In his documentary titled Light On Earth, David Attenborough tells of an unbelievable experience of the S.S. Lima. On January 25, 1995, as this British Merchant vessel sailed the waters of the northwestern Indian Ocean, the seas beneath them began to glow.

On a clear moonless night, while 150 miles east of the Somalian coast, a whitish glow was observed on the horizon. And after fifteen minutes of steaming the ship was completely surrounded by a sea of milky white color with a fairly uniform luminescence. It appeared as though the ship was sailing over a field of snow or gliding over the clouds.

While stories of glowing seas have been a part of maritime folklore since the 1700’s, they have never been scientifically confirmed. But a group of scientists had an ingenious idea. Using a Defense Meteorological Satellite, Dr. Stephen Haddack and his team discovered a large luminescent area. Roughly the size of Connecticut (110 miles long), the phenomenon was identified in the exact area where the captain had reported his ship that night. Marine biologists discovered that the glowing sea was caused by massive swarms of bioluminescent bacteria feeding on large populations of algae.

Imagine that for a moment. Bacteria are microscopic. But when they congregate together, these tiny creatures, that cannot even be seen by the naked eye, can suddenly radiate their light 600 miles into orbit.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There is no place our light cannot reach if together we will let it shine before a searching humanity.

Professor Mary Poplin from Claremont Graduate School says she met Jesus in a dream. At the time, she was teaching radical feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. As a devotee of New Age spirituality, she claims she was the poster child for "spiritual but not religious." She writes:

A central image in my life was the [New Age] actress Shirley MacLaine, dancing on the beach in free-spirited fashion. I was seeking happiness, self-fulfillment, and freedom from restraint, all the while deluding myself about my own "goodness." We were children of the 60s, products of the "I'm okay, you're okay" culture.

And yet in certain moments, she said, "I could see glimpses of who I really was. I was not growing freer. My heart was growing harder, my emotions darker, and my mind more confused." Then in 1992, she had an unshakable dream in which she saw Jesus at the Last Supper. "When I got to Jesus," she wrote, "and looked into his eyes, I grasped immediately that every cell in my body was filled with filth. Weeping, I fell at his feet. But when he reached over and touched my shoulders, I suddenly felt perfect peace!"

She reached out to a friend who suggested that she needed to read the Bible. Then in January 1993, she was sitting in a small church and received an invitation to come forward. She prayed, "If you are real, please come and get me. Suddenly I felt the same peace I had known in the dream."

"To clean up my soul," she said, "God taught me what a good friend of mine calls the 'bar of soap' passage—1 John 1:9 … But forgiveness wasn't always easy to accept. I had undergone two abortions, and over three long years of prayer, I doubted whether God had truly forgiven me. Some counselors and fellow Christians had encouraged me to 'forgive myself,' but the more I searched Scripture the more confident I was that forgiveness could only come as God's gift. Like Paul, I had to learn to '[forget] what is behind and [strain] toward what is ahead' (Phil. 3:13-14)."

Editorial Comment: Here's more on Poplin's story in her words: "Coming to Christ changed not only my personal life but my intellectual life as well. My scholarly work has always focused on the best ways to educate the poor. So in 1996 … I spent two months [in Kolkata with Mother Teresa] tending to sick infants, performing some cleaning tasks, and running supplies to the mother house … One day, as I was sitting on a bench ... Mother Teresa herself walked straight up to me. She shook her finger and instructed, 'God does not call everyone to serve the poor like he calls us, but God does call everyone to a Calcutta—you have to find yours!'

"When I resumed teaching later that year, I experienced a profound intellectual crisis—my Kolkata, then and now. I would weep before entering class. Midway through the semester, I realized I was still teaching the same things I had always taught, even though I knew they were untrue. I was allowing secularism to define my intellectual boundaries. But the more I read the Bible, the more I could see how Christ's wisdom reaches beyond secular thinking, even where it poses no contradiction … [I began to see that] there is physical water, and there is spiritual living water. In Christ, there is always a higher rationality."

Scott McKnight writes in “The Hum of Angels”:

I was visiting a bird-supplies store when I mentioned to the owner that my wife and I had owned a hummingbird feeder but had never once seen a hummer at the feeder, so we tossed it out. I concluded that there were no hummers near our home.

The shop owner asked where we lived, I told him, and then he said, "They are there. Not only do some of your neighbors have hummers on their feeders, but hummers are all over the village." What he said next was the take-home line: "You just have to have eyes to see them. Once you do, you will see them everywhere. They are small and fast and camouflaged, but they are not that hard to spot."

Eventually we bought a new feeder, filled it, and waited until our eyes got accustomed to the sight of hummers. We now see them everywhere. When other people go on a walk with us, we often observe a hummer—but it is rare that our friends spot one. It takes experience. You need to learn to spot them out of the side of your eyes and acclimate to their habits of zooming and darting and taking shelter on obscure branches and even on telephone lines. But once you've learned to spot a hummer you will see them everywhere because they are everywhere.

Like angels. They, too, are all around us. Few of us have seen one because we first have to learn what we are looking for. In a good book about angels, Martin Israel, quoting a friend, wrote this: "Eternity lies all round us and only a veil prevents us seeing it." The hum of angels surrounds us, and we only need ears to hear it or eyes to see them. Or perhaps a special sense for them. After all, the Bible tells us that Balaam's donkey could see an angel that Balaam himself could not see.

We've all been asked the question: "If you had the chance to talk to your hero, who would it be and what would you say?" Washington, D.C. cab driver Sam Snow didn't have much of a chance to prepare for a conversation with his hero, though, because it took him by surprise.

While driving his taxi , Snow mentioned to his passengers that even though he was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, his all-time favorite player was Broncos legend John Elway. The passengers then asked him if he thought he could recognize Elway if he ever met him. Snow then turned around to realize that the famous former quarterback, who was in Washington, D.C. for the presidential inauguration, was in fact riding in his own backseat. The two snapped a quick picture, but only after Snow chastised Elway for beating his Steelers so many times in the playoffs.

Potential Preaching Angles: (1) Hospitality—we are sometimes entertaining angels unawares as Hebrews 13 reminds us. (2) God, presence of—it's possible for God to be near and at work in our lives but we don't recognize his presence.

Boston Light, America's first lighthouse, just celebrated its 300th birthday—but Sally Snowman will be the first to let you know some more specifics about what that "birthday" really means. "The original tower built in 1716 was blown up by the British in 1776," she explains. "We have the new one."

Sally Snowman mans—or "womans," in her words—the lighthouse, serving as its 70th keeper (and the first female to have the title). Over the three centuries since its inception, a keeper has kept the light burning; however, the position in 2016 looks markedly different from those who held the role in the 18th century. As the lighthouse is now "fully automated," Snowman "maintain[s] the grounds, giv[es] tours and manag[es] 90 volunteers."

Yet even with these modernized tasks, Snowman realizes the significance of her job: "Here I am in 2016, the keeper for our 300th anniversary," she says. "That's way beyond my wildest dreams."

Possible Preaching Angles: The various roles within the body of Christ—missionary, teacher, preacher, etc.—look drastically different within various contexts: whether historical eras or cultural circumstances. The importance and the purpose of those roles, however, has remained constant since Jesus' command to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).

The human brain weighs three pounds. It is the size of a softball, and yet with it we have the capacity to learn something new every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the next three hundred million years. God has created us with an unlimited capacity to learn. What that tells me is that we ought to keep learning until the day we die.

Leonardo da Vinci once observed that the average human "looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking." But not da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance man called the five senses the ministers of the soul. Perhaps no one in history stewarded them better than he did. Famous for his paintings The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, da Vinci trained himself in curiosity. He never went anywhere without his notebooks, in which he recorded ideas and observations in mirror-image cursive. His journals contain the genesis of some of his most ingenious ideas—a helicopter-like contraption he called an orinthopter, a diving suit, and a robotic knight. While on his own deathbed, he meticulously noted his own symptoms in his journal. That's devotion to learning. Seven thousand pages of da Vinci's journals have been preserved. Bill Gates purchased eighteen pages for $30.8 million a few decades ago.

Paul likens us to shining stars, and the word shine means to reflect. The scientific term is albedo. It's a measurement of how much sunlight a celestial body reflects. The planet Venus, for example, has the highest albedo at .65. In other words, 65 percent of the light that hits Venus is reflected. Depending on where it's at in its orbit, the almost-a-planet Pluto has an albedo ranging from .49 to .66. Our night-light, the moon, has an albedo of .07. Only seven percent of sunlight is reflected, yet it lights our way on cloudless nights.

In a similar sense, each of us has a spiritual albedo. The goal? One hundred percent reflectivity. We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord. You cannot produce light. You can only reflect it.

Leaders, especially those who are elected through a democratic process, usually reflect the spiritual and moral character of a nation. Those who obtain power through deception often come from cultures built on lies. The same holds true for materialistic or violent leaders.

Other times, God puts people in power to carry out his judgment. God referred to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as "my deputy" (Jeremiah 25:9; 27:6) and "my servant" (43:10), whom he used to punish the people of Judah for their disobedience. Habakkuk acknowledged the same reality.

When the Ottoman Empire threatened Europe, Martin Luther declared, "The Turk is the rod of God's anger against the apostate church, so opposition to it must begin with repentance, prayer, and preaching God's Word." If a political leader's behavior or stance on issues contradicts what we believe the Bible teaches, we need to step back humbly and ask, "Is God showing us something about our spiritual state?"—and then repent of any sin he reveals.