It is a natural tendency to go where the light is brightest so we can see better.  This trait is embedded into our being so much so that we catch ourselves looking for something we lost in places brighter and lighter as opposed to looking in the dark.  If something is lost in the dark, we adults will first acquire a tool of light to shed a beam on the dark places as we look for what is lost.

I giggle even now as I remember a time when my mom once told me to look for a needle that had dropped to the floor while she was sewing a garment on her machine.  I was a young child who was trying to obey, but I was looking in all the wrong places.  She had dropped it near her but I was looking where I could see better—in the light!  She asked why was I looking across the room.  I told her the light is better; it’s too dark under the machine—a child’s logic!

Sometime we go through life looking in all the wrong places for what is lost. Even as believers, we can get sloppy with our serving with attitudes and behaviors that are dark and worldly.  Lost people are looking for Light.  When we show late or not at all we cause frustration in God’s work of helping people find, believe, and follow Jesus.  Paul reminds his Corinthian friends to stay focused on Christ, God helping them.  Jesus is the reason we live and breathe.  Jesus is the why we worship.  It is Jesus we seek as we listen and learn from God’s Word. 

So, Paul takes a minute to remind all believers that we are God’s instruments of His Light in this dark world.  He does this often in his letters to the churches!  This passage is no exception.  God is in all the details of our lives—He even delights in them!  “Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details.” 

Jesus is the Light of the world.  Follow the Light.  Stay in the Light.  This is the one time that looking for what you’ve lost makes perfect sense to look only in the Light—where you can see better!

2 Corinthians 6, The Message

Staying at Our Post

^1-10 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,

I heard your call in the nick of time;
The day you needed me, I was there to help.

Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

^11-13 Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

* * *

^14-18 Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:

“I’ll live in them, move into them;
    I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
    leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
    I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
    you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

“Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.”

We can always count on Paul to give us not only a “should” but “how” to live in the Light of God’s love and behave in ways that please God.  As soon we believe Jesus, repent of our sins to Jesus, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live inside us—the “temple” in which God now resides.  God’s Holy Spirit then guides us to how to live this new life!

How to live that helps not hinders as we serve together in the Light:

• Show up on time together as we serve.  This alleviates frustration of last minute adjustments.
• Rely on God to help us in all the details of serving Him by serving others who need God.
• Listen and learn from each other who are dedicated to God as servants.
• Stay alert and faithful—no matter what is happening around us.
• Be at our best and do our best to honor and please God in all we think, say, and do.
• “Leave corruption and compromise for good” says God who validates us in the details. Through good times and bad, tears of joy and of pain—be honest, tell the Truth, seek to be holy, God helping us. 

“I want you all for myself. I’ll be a Father to you; you’ll be sons and daughters to me.” –God

Pause to prayerfully consider and evaluate;

Am I living too small? 

Do I put limits on my serving?  Do I limit God’s work in me?

Do I really believe what God says to be really real? 

What would living in the “wide, open spaciousness” of God look like for me?

Lord,

Cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, refresh our souls with your new mercies for today, continually restore the joy and peace of you in us and us in you.  Guide all that we think, say, and do today.  Open our hearts to all you want us to see, hear, feel, touch, and experience.

In Jesus Name, Amen