Day 142: Examples of Light

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin."  1 John 1:5-7

This passage should give us all hope.

It first defines how we are to live our lives.  We need to make sure that our faith manifests itself in our lives through our actions.  We teach the best and spread the Gospel the best through our actions, for that is how others can conceptualize things.  Over the past week now, I have made many Chinese dumplings (餃子 and 小籠包).  I'm a guy who likes to learn things from books, and that works quite well with most recipes I've encountered.  However, the trademark of dumplings is their pleats.  I have read countless instructions on how to perform them, but they all turned out to be disastrous and plain odd.  But, after watching one video, I was able to understand how to fold them properly.  After a few dumplings for practice (and eating, of course) I feel that I have made quite some progress.

The way we live our lives becomes a light for many who are around us.  If we demonstrate our faith, just like a video, people will be able to understand all that they have heard from Christianity.  In fact, we too will begin to understand the bible and teachings better when we live our faith.

The latter part of this passage is what should give us all hope.  It says that when we live our lives faithfully, we will have fellowship not just with God, but with everybody around us.  Now, it is amazing enough to have fellowship with God, but it must be reassuring to be in the company of the many faithful who are walking in the light.  People who live around us, going through many of our same challenges, should make us feel closer to God.  The reason why we'll be in good company is because we will all be heading in the same direction, albeit from different starting points.  When we wander without God, we will end up in so many places that are unfulfilling.  Many will actually find themselves heading backwards towards destruction.  But, when we walk towards and in the light of God, we will find all of those who are walking in the same direction.  Those people will be able to dust off your shoes, provide you with water, hand you a coat if you need one, and will welcome you to the glory of God.  We need to provide that fellowship, because it is our duty as Christians.  The light of God is God's unconditional love for all of us.  When we provide that fellowship, we will see the light grow not only around us, but also in us.

Day 138: Leading with Love

"The ways of righteous people are acceptable before the Lord, and through them even enemies become friends."  Proverbs 15:32

This proverb is inspiring to me, and the first thing that comes to mind is: lead by example.

We are to lead by example because that's the way to establish a way or a path.  Paths are formed by lots of effort.  It can be over the span of ages, with the feet, hooves, and paws of many trodding on the same path, or it can be made with the effort of one or more workers making the path.  The important thing to remember, though, is that all our examples should be things that will bring others towards God.

Indeed, the proverb says, "through them even enemies become friends," which means that there is a clear path that leads to righteousness.  And, in Godly terms, we understand that our notion of righteousness involves transforming our lives to bring us closer to becoming manifestations of the unconditional love that God has for all of us.  This means that we need to put aside all our prejudices along our journey of purification.  It's not enough just to confess with our mouths and words.  We need to live our faith.

Leading by example will involve lots of effort on our part, especially because we have to know where we ourselves are going.  We can figure this out with our prayer and our bible reading.  We will find out that God is always calling upon us to love our neighbors.  And, when we truly adopt this principle of love, we will start to bring others into our community purely by our example of love.  Leading by example doesn't just mean to teach others about our ways.  Leading by example means that we will lead ourselves forward with this example.  It'll be a process, but it will be rewarding for us and for all those around us.