I always find it crazy when out of the blue God just hits me with a seemingly magical epiphany. No matter how many times He does this, I always am left standing before our awesome Creator, wondering where He wants me go next with my newly given knowledge.
You can probably guess that the reason why I am telling you this is because I have quite recently had one of those epiphanies. Well, yes, I did have one that shook me up pretty good.
It started when I was merely sitting in my dorm room watching Scrubs (this is a daily occurrence now). I had just got out of my last class of the day about two and a half hours ago… it is currently three-thirty. I was sitting there watching Scrubs and thinking just how awesome it is too only have to go to class for two hours and then be done for the rest of the day, when something hit me. No, it wasn’t anything that was concrete or tangible, but rather something hit my heart. It told me that I needed to read.
Read what? As the moment passed by I began to realize that this must be God telling me to read… but He wasn’t being every specific. Eventually I decided to read a daily devotional. It had a quote from Abraham Lincoln that said, “I do not boast that God is on my side. I humbly pray that I am on God’s side.”
Reading that quote quickly got my mind and my heart rolling. Almost instantly I felt the weight of my own hypocrisy. I realized that for the last several years I had merely been a hypocritical “Christian”. I was not following Christ with my actions or my thoughts. Even though I was putting on the “Christian” mask, I was by no means following the One that I called my Savior. Lukewarm is not a very good place to be if you know what Christ said about those who are lukewarm.
Even though the whole process of going from watching Scrubs to beginning to pray was only slightly longer than it took for me to pull up that daily devotional on my computer, I spent several moments in prayer with my God. I was simply praying about everything: telling Him how sorry I was, asking for His help and guidance so that I may longer be bound my hypocrisy, etc. But one thing that came to me during my prayers was the idea of imitating Christ. Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are to be imitators of Christ, but I felt like God was putting a prayer in my heart. So I started praying, “God make me like the moon.”
That phrase may seem a bit strange to you, but first let me explain myself. As we all know the sun is the brightest celestial body in the sky during the day. It is so bright that we are not able to see the other stars in the sky while the sun is above us. During the day the sun is the only light that we can see.
But during the nighttime, the sun is no longer above our heads. Instead of the sun’s light, the night sky is lit by the faint light of billions of other stars. In fact the brightest object in the night sky is not even a star but the moon. But there is something strange about the moon’s light in comparison to the light of the countless stars that fill the sky: the moon doesn’t produce its own light. No, the moon’s light, the brightest light in the night sky, is merely a reflection of the sun’s light. The moon acts like a mirror for the sun’s light, but the moon is not the sun and therefore is not able to be nearly as bright as the sun. In fact the moon’s light doesn’t come close to the full light of the sun. But it is still the brightest in the night sky because of the light from the sun.
By now I imagine that you probably know where I am going to go with this analogy. Christ is like the sun. When He is around His light is so glorious that the other lights, the other stars, are no longer seen. But Christ left this world, and though he will come again, we are currently living in a nighttime world. Christ told us to be the light of the world, but how can we be the light of a dying world when we, ourselves, are a part of that world? Christ will make us like the moon. Just as the moon is the brightest in the sky because it is reflecting the light of the sun, so too are we to be the light of the world by becoming reflections of the Son. If we will let Christ shine through us then we will also shine with His light. We will light the night with Christ’s light until the day comes when Christ returns.
It is amazing what a little time with the King can do. I pray and hope that Christians will strive to be like Christ, for that is the only way that we will be able to earn our name. My hope is that I will continue to follow Christ as He leads me away from my hypocrisy and closer to Him.
Sincerely,
Cole
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children. Ephesians 5:1
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