One of the challenges of good blogging is to keep all entries short, pithy, and appealing. Quite an undertaking, when we deal with subjects as vast as eternity and as important as the life and health of our souls!   How about this excerpt from Ephesians 5  …

. . . once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light . . . 

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 

. . . when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.   Therefore it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” (Ephesians 5:6-14)

Because, truly, our goal is to make this a season of watching and prayerfully anticipating the coming of the Lord, the celebration of His birth and, more emphatically, of His reign in us, we have to address the darkness as well as glorying in His light.

Let’s pray and rejoice, with the striking of the match each evening, that we may reprove every dark place that remains in us, be it as small as a mustard seed. Oh, yes, faith is the seed of which the Lord spoke, but seeds of regret, bitterness, fear, dissipation, and unbelief grow, too, unless they are uprooted. If even one of our “besetting sins” were to be choked out, even now, our holidays – all our days – would brighten.

We aren’t afraid of what we see in our hearts, for the debt of our sin is paid and newness of life has come. We fear God, and we put off the “old man” for the sake of the life of Christ. We name the dark corners and call them what they are – self-pity, unforgiveness, selfishness, greed . . . nothing, nothing that the Lord hasn’t dispelled before.

As we settle into each Advent day or evening, we don’t hide our faults in the gaiety or the rush of the season. We just honestly say, we surrender our darkness and repent of our pride. We will have done with sin, the very sin we know we’ve sheltered, and we will walk in light.

“But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from sin.” (1 John 1:7)

This is walking with God. This is bearing the fruit of light. This is going out to meet the Bridegroom, our wicks trimmed, and taking the fullness of His Spirit with us!

There … how’d I do? Great big subject … one small encouragement.

Lamp lighter in Brest, Belarus

Yogi555, by permission