Keep The Lights On (Friday Devotional)

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

- Matthew 5:15-16

Over the last couple of months, my kids yelled the same refrain any time we were coming home at night and I prepared to turn into our alley: “Can we see the Christmas lights?” If they shouted it out quickly enough, I would invariably stop short of the alley, turning instead down one of our neighborhood streets so that we could all get a glimpse of the colorful lights.

But starting December 26, there have been fewer and fewer Christmas lights to see over the past few weeks on our journeys home. Indeed, I even boxed ours up just this week. So when the kids asked me the other night to pull into the street for a look at the lights, I broke the news to them: everybody’s put their lights away.

Some lights work that way, useful for a time only to then be hidden until needed again. Such lights are exclusively decorative, not ones you rely on day-to-day. Putting them away doesn’t leave you shrouded in darkness.

But no homeowner hides all the lightbulbs in their fixtures. No office building takes out their fluorescent bulbs and throws them in storage in the middle of a workday. Cities don’t extinguish their streetlamps. That’s because these types of lights aren’t decorative, they’re necessary.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his followers the light of the world, and calls on us to let our light shine before others rather than hiding it from view. What he’s saying is that making our faith visible through good works isn’t optional, it’s necessary.

In a tradition where we understand salvation to come by God’s grace and through faith, there is sometimes a dismissal of the importance of works in the Chrsitian life. After all, if works don’t save you, surely they are secondary, just something you tack on. But Jesus is clear here: good deeds are not merely a decorative part of the life of faith. It is in part by seeing faith in action that others come to know the Lord. So don’t hide your light–you never know whose kid is crying out to see it.