Following our Christmas Eve service, in which we focused on Jesus as the Light of the world during the season of lights, I was approached by a friend and fellow CrossPointer.
He, coming from the medical profession, always has such a unique take on the human body and its relation to spiritual components that I asked him to put his thoughts on paper so I could share them.
Take a minute and think a little more deeply on Jesus being the Light of the world, and how our own bodies can teach us more of what that means.
Thanks Tom for a great piece to think on!
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Drawn to the Light
As we come into the world, we develop in utter darkness within the womb. This is life in the most innocent state, our spirit protected by God; just as in the Holy of Holies there is no need for light or fear of darkness.
God knows the darkness, he created it and was present before he divided it from light; God’s sovereignty is absolute, he rules over darkness. He rules over all and has used darkness for his own purposes to hide himself before man. The purpose of God’s delineation of light and darkness was to divide. The Hebrew verb “baw-dal’” is the term for dividing or partitioning. God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. Gen. 1:3-4
The physical sense of sight correlates to the spiritual search for light. The eye captures an image like a camera. Light enters through a small hole called the pupil and is focused on the retina, which is like the film in a camera. The optical lens, much like a lens on a camera, focuses the image onto the retina. The colored ring of the eye, the iris, controls the amount of light entering the eye. The iris constricts when light is bright and dilates when light is dim. Blindness occurs due to darkness; when no light passes thru the lens to focus on the retina total blindness occurs. When we have full functioning of the eye the iris dilates completely when in darkness in an attempt to allow any possible light in.
From the time we are born our spirit, much like our eyes, seeks to acquire light. Having been separated from the purity of God, in darkness we try to comprehend the surroundings. Without light we are without direction, we do not know what darkness contains except what our senses communicate to us. Being born into sin, our only alternative is following the pathway identifying with things known.
Jesus is “The Light of the World” (John 5:12), the gift God gave as an example of how to live. When coming out of darkness into the presence of the light of Christ we are like the physical eye adapting to light. We have no conscious control over the eye adapting to the presence of light. We will adapt just as the iris does, restricting the amount of light on the retina. If the light is too brilliant for the physical eye, it can injure the nerve impulse transmission leading to temporary or permanent blindness, likewise God will give us no more than we can handle. We will follow Christ as the eye follows the light, and we will continually adjust to the brightness of His presence just as, with time, our physical eyes adjust. The vividness and radiance of Christ will escort and direct revealing a truthful image of our circumstances without confusion. God has given us a luminous path providing a return to our inheritance, the divine state to commune in the presence of God. No longer do we have to wander blindly in darkness but are able to see by the gift of His light.
By Tom Miller