Why God’s Light Is for Absolutely Everyone
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
John 1:9–10
In elementary school during recess, two team captains allotted by the teacher would, one by one, pick members of the class for their team. The process was quite flattering for the more athletic kids, and quite excruciating for those always picked last. Having the best players made a team captain feel their win was absolute.
When they align with our belief system or reasoning, absolutes present the illusion of control. There’s something comforting about believing our way is the only right way, or that we know what’s right all the time — about being certain, even about the future.
Reality, however, is quite a different matter. There are fewer absolutes in life than many of us would like to admit. And the few that exist are likely to make us uncomfortable because they hold us to a standard.
For example, everyone is created in the image of God. Period.
If the lowliest among us matter — the ones always picked last —then how we treat them matters.
Everyone: it’s a word we may hear on a daily basis, but if we pause to consider its implications, we realize how absolute it is. It’s a word that provides no exceptions.
The light of Jesus is for everyone, not some. Light is given to the invisible and the entitled, to the humble and the arrogant, the rich and the poor. Light is given to the world by the one whose love created it, even though that world didn’t recognize him.
The God who was born, not in a state-of-the-art facility, but on the ground where animals defecate, is more easily recognized by those who are low enough to witness it. Those who are in proximity to that experience have a greater vantage point.
The lowly don’t seem to matter to us, but the fact that God became a lowly person ensures tells us otherwise. The world didn’t imagine God would enter the world as God did, and many hadn’t imagined a low-born Savior.
Light is given, but whether we receive or not, live in it or not, are changed by it or not, is dependent upon our ability to recognize God’s presence in the least, lost, and lowly.
This Advent the light is bright, but if we can’t see it, perhaps we’re limited by our ideas of where we believe the light should be.
Prophetic Practice:
Reflect on where in life you feel most in control. Is that a place God has been invited into? Take a moment and welcome the light of God and welcome the illumination.
