I was meditating on the things of God the other day
and I felt him say to my heart, “I am the Light of the world.” I thought, Wait
aren’t we to be a light to the world?
Again I heard, “I am the Light of the
world.” Because this was different from the scripture in the New Testament (Mt.
5:14), I was set back some. You always need to check what you’re hearing to
what God has already said.
So because I realized that the Lord was not simply
stating scripture and wanted me to understand something else, I started to
meditate and ask God what He meant by the phrase “I am the Light of the world” and what He wanted me to get out of
it.
The first thing that came to mind when thinking
about the phrase was that when Moses asked God His name, He said, “I Am who I
Am” (Ex. 3:14). He is the eternal, self-existent One. Lord, you are the great I
Am, the Lord over all creation. Help me to give my life to you today as a
living sacrifice and as an act of worship. Too many times I seem to get
absorbed into the busyness of my day and forget who God really is and how He
wants to express His eternal love in the everyday things of my life. Yes, Lord,
You are the great I Am. Now help me to understand what You mean by light of the
world.
I started thinking how the very first thing God
created was light (“Let there be light” Genesis 13). The Lord brought me to the
idea of how the presence and absence of light affects us - the necessity of
light for life. I thought about it for a few days – a few very gray days – and
realized that on the days when the sun was not shining, it was harder for me to
get going and harder to stay motivated. I am definitely one of those people who
gets affected by lack of light. I love the sun. I feel better when it’s
shining. I feel more motivated, even healthier. I know, I know – skin cancer
and all, but even the medical community is now saying that we should expose
ourselves fifteen minutes a day to the sun without sunscreen so our bodies can
absorb vitamin D.
Consider this article that discusses the connection
between the lack of light and depression:
The association between darkness and depression is
well established. Now a March 25 study in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences reveals for the first time the profound changes that light
deprivation causes in the brain.
Neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania
kept rats in the dark for six weeks. The animals not only exhibited depressive
behavior but also suffered damage in brain regions known to be underactive in
humans during depression. The researchers observed neurons that produce
norepi-nephrine, dopamine and serotonin—common neurotransmitters involved in
emotion, pleasure and cognition—in the process of dying. This neuronal death,
which was accompanied in some areas by compromised synaptic connections, may be
the mechanism underlying the darkness-related blues of seasonal affective
disorder.
Principal investigator Gary Aston-Jones, now at the
Medical University of South Carolina, speculates that the dark-induced effects
stem from a disruption of the body’s clock. Aston-Jones says: “When the circadian system is not
receiving normal light, that in turn might lead to changes in brain systems
that regulate mood.”*
OK, Lord, I get it now, what you wanted me to know.
That you are the great I Am and without the sustaining power of your light, the
essence of your greatness and power, I will be negatively affected – the world
will be negatively affected. Light is necessary for health – in the natural and
in the spiritual.Thank You Lord for Your desire to speak to my heart, my soul and my mind.
*http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=down-in-the-dark
