Walking in the light
On The fourth day of Christmas, Thursday, December 28, 2017
If we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another … if we say “we are without sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive and cleanse us. – from 1 John 1
In Latin, Valparaiso University calls out to all the world, In luce tua videmus lucem, “In Thy Light, We See Light” (Psalm 36:9). My alma mater, when I attended there, required chapel attendance. But after chapel, I found my way to places in the dark. Just 17, I was ready for anything. So I thought.
I ended up in a shoplifting nightmare, tempted further and further until a maternal clerk told me to stop but allowed me to avoid consequences. I stopped.
I learned to drink too much 156 proof rum. I smoked what there was to smoke. In my own precocious, curious way, I sinned and sinned and sinned.
What I mean is that I turned away from God. Not so much in what I did, but in what I thought. I am so grateful for God’s patience, thankful that I had time to learn more about him than I could ever have learned without all those turning-aways. All those sins.
At first I worshipped the thrills. I fell down on my knees before the pseudo-freedoms of the night. Then in reaction I spun the pendulum and struggled back toward physical or emotional or mental health without thinking twice about the spiritual health they all were founded on. I worshipped a little yoga, a little hot air ballooning, a great deal of sex. Breathing hard replaced breathing deeply.
Looking back in my journals, I recall many moments of illumination. Once I knew what to call them, epiphanies came often. Finally, in a wild marching California dance in August 1976, I sang along with everyone, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” At least for the moment, my idolatries fell to pieces. Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul. I turned back toward God.
In all the years since, I’ve turned away and turned back, turned away and turned back, been desolated and consoled, listened for God in all the wrong places, until without fail and every time, he whispers exactly what I need to hear.
Last night Aki and Andi took us to a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, and then to Anna Court in Cedar Park, where Christmas lights poured over us like a waterfall. The best was at the last, a two-story adobe mansion adorned only in white, lit by a star, embracing a beautiful front yard manger scene. An angel sings her praises.
The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes. What’s it all for, after all?
Solomon nailed it in Ecclesiastes: “Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man.”
And so I do, Lord. Strive to keep from sinning. Keep your commandments. And when I do not, your forgiveness is there to fall on me like rain. Wash me clean, run down my wayward cheeks, restore to me the joy of my salvation. I am yours, you are mine. You are what you are. And always you remind me in every way that You are good.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2017/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1642
