Refracting Light

Scripture

Jesus said,“Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you see that what you swallow can’t contaminate you? It doesn’t enter your heart but your stomach, works its way through the intestines, and is finally flushed.” …. He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.” (Mark 7:18-23 MSG) 

Refracting Light

A friend joined me for a sandwich earlier this month and then we retired to our living room to do a meditation on a conversation Jesus had with his critics, the curious and the disciples. We opened with this prayer from the Northumbria Community; “Most powerful Holy Spirit, come down upon us and subdue us. From heaven, where the ordinary is made glorious, and glory seems but ordinary, bathe us with the brilliance of Your light like dew.” 

He broke the silence by pointing to the sun in the window and describing an experience he had that morning as he looked at branches out his bedroom window. The rising sun warmed the snow and ice on the branches and droplets of water hung suspend in the sun’s rays. Each droplet received the light but refracted it into tiny rainbows – the radiance of the Spirit.  

The Spirit as light shimmering and bathing us touched us deeply and then we listened to Jesus answer critics who thought he was careless about a host of dietary and cleansing rituals. Jesus’ list of things we produce from our inner selves sobered us because it was like a mirror for us.  

We are both geezers, but the inner stuff Jesus talks about is still there for us as unhelpful default behaviours that require help from God and caring friends to do the good that also resides in us in Jesus. So the light of the Spirit can be beautiful rainbows, hard truths and guidance toward help. 

A Prayer for Today

O God who comes to us in Jesus to show us how to live, be wary of our own ability to create the unhealthy and unhelpful and ask for the help offered to live lives of goodness, truth and justice       …. For Jesus’ sake