Marvelous Light

The stained glass windows were beautiful. The statues held me spellbound, wondering if they could really see me whisper with my sister in the choir loft. I sang loudly because I could. The man regally dressed in robes down front seldom smiled. He looked to languish through his routine, from memory. I’ll bet he could do it in his sleep.

And Jesus, the ultimate martyr, though I knew He’d risen from the dead, perpetually hung on the cross, agonizing over every little thing I did wrong.

The scene vividly comes to life in my memories as though I was fidgeting there now. As far as memory serves, this is where it all began. Though I know now that God was loving me, wooing me and calling me since before I was born, my mind doesn’t take me that far back.

I’m no longer surrounded by the colors that fall from the brilliant, stained glass windows that filled the room with a demand for respect of the authority represented therein. I miss the reverence; the aura of holiness. But today my understanding of the power of God lifts me up higher than where I sat in that choir loft. My childlike innocence faded away with my youth and I’ve learned many lies over the decades. But with Jesus renewing my life and as I renew my mind through His Word, innocence is not a thing of the past, but a new thing every morning, should I choose to embrace it.

Some mornings we wake up with a cloud over our heads. Who brought the cloud of discouragement? Who brought the empty, weary thoughts of meaninglessness? Does it matter? Sometimes they’re just there.

In the tabernacle of my mind, where God reveals Himself to me in new facets all the time, there are stained glass windows; there is an air of holiness; there is excitement and reverence and power and joy waiting for me. I miss out on all of that when I relinquish my right to go there. This is my place. This is my piece of heaven on earth.

The same foe that brings sorrows and emptiness brandishes his lies to keep me from fellowship with the God of the universe.

All I need to do is push past him. His authority is only that which I give him. Sometimes I give him a lot as I sulk.

With me, push past the gray into brilliance; push past the darkness to into God’s glorious, marvelous Light.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;” 1 Peter 2:9 (KJV)

Image courtesy of stocksphotosforfree.com