Bob Ragan is the director of Regeneration’s Northern Virginia office and is an ordained deacon in the Anglican church. He graciously wrote this week’s post for us. If you live in the DC Metro Area, please consider joining Bob for Into His Marvelous Light, our annual Sweet and Savory Fundraiser. You can learn more or register here.
A few weeks ago, I had surgery performed in my left eye. There were two conditions needing correction, which obstructed my vision: a cataract and massive floaters. It felt like I was looking through a lightly fogged windshield with the presence of continually swirling objects. I could function normally except when I had to read. It was difficult to do so, especially in a dimly lit room.
When reading, I experienced a diminished capacity to absorb the content because I was distracted by the “fog” on the lens of my eye. My attention kept shifting from the content of the writing to simply attempting to identify the words. I needed the presence of a stronger light to illuminate the words, which then allowed my mind to freely absorb the content.
For decades, the vision of our culture has diminished. It has developed cataracts resulting in a continual loss of clarity regarding God’s design for His creation.
Like massive floaters, secular thinking obstructs an already clouded vision, further blocking the capacity to see and discern aright.
We know the world needs correction to see with clarity, but it is refusing the required surgery. It gets lost in attempting to identify words like gender, sexuality, and intimacy. Attention focuses on words, categories, and labels. In its dimly lit room, the world needs a bright light.
God has called us “out of darkness into His wonderful light” (2 Peter 2:9). He brought the light we needed to illuminate His word. Then, that light became part of who we are, because we received the Light, Jesus Himself. We are “children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness” (1 Thessalonians 5:5). We can bring the light needed to free the world from trying to identify “words” and begin to embrace the content of God.
The world is starving for the truth of God’s intent for His creation. It is mired in false intimacy, believing it is satisfied. However, the original desire for true intimacy, to know and be known, remains as an unfulfilled ache. What it thinks is meeting its need is only further exacerbating it.
This is the message that consumes my calling. We are to be God’s light, which frees others to grasp the reality that only true intimacy, with God and community, will assuage the ache within. We are the vessels which God uses to bring others into His marvelous light.
In Christ’s name,
Bob
Thank you Bob for these wonderful thoughts on being a light in the dark world around us. Just another thought about light… it requires sacrifice, a cost is involved in shining. A candle burns its wick and wax, a light requires energy, it is not self-sustaining. Therefore we must be in the Word of God, in prayer and communication with Him that Jesus’ light within us will grow brighter, not because of who we are, but because of Who He IS!