THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

I have long been an amateur astronomer. I built my first telescope in the early 90’s from plans found in a book at the library written in the 1930’s. It is a Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian base. I ordered my mirror set and constructed the whole thing from plywood, nuts and bolts and plumbing fixtures. It is not much to look at but does a spectacular job. I used to spend countless hours peering through the eyepiece awaiting the heavens to pass over my tiny window to the sky, as I live in the ‘holler’ and the hills rise steeply and there is no view to any horizon.

I once heard someone say that ‘to look at a star is to look back in time, as the light that falls on your retina left that celestial body many years ago. A light year is defined as ‘the distance that a beam of light travels in one calendar year.’ Light travels at approximately 300,000 km per second ( pretty darn fast!) and to put that distance in perspective, it takes 4.3 years to reach us from the nearest star in our galaxy and the light from the Sun takes 8.3 minutes to reach Earth.
So..now to borrow a phrase from that prior sentence and tweak it ever so slightly to make a point about what we see with our own eyes, let’s say ‘how far away is the ‘Light from the Son’? Is it, as Carl Sagan would have said; “billions and billions of miles away?” or is it omnipresent, forever emanating from us as Christians?
As Christians, we should strive to be Christ-like, flooding the darkness with the light of Jesus, embodying ourselves as to the lampstand and not hiding the light beneath the bushel. Some of us, me especially, have those moments where we tend to keep the wick so trimmed down as if to nearly snuff the flame. At other times we burn so bright that soot visibly rises and the wax flows in rivulets, cascading to collect at our feet.
How do we achieve that ‘light’? How do we appear to those around us? (bright, dim, shadowy, blinding?)
The light of Christ will forever glow within us; it is up to us to let that Light shine outward to others. The Light we exude through Christ shouldn’t take years to reach the eyes of someone else. It should be inconceivably fast in closing that distance.

I love the words to the song by Graham Kendrick:
Shine, Jesus, Shine

Fill this land with the Father's glory

Blaze, Spirit, blaze,

Set our hearts on fire

Flow river flow,

Flood the nations with grace and mercy

Send forth Your Word Lord, and let there be light

But I still like to sing along with Carson:
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! let shine, let it shine, let it shine!