Have You Seen the Light?

    The following story reminds us some persons’ mental light-bulb burns more brightly than others. Story is that the brilliant scientist Albert Einstein had an encounter with a not-so-brilliant movie executive. Einstein reportedly paid a visit to Hollywood in 1931 for the premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s "City Lights." While at a party, he attempted to explain his scientific theories to a studio executive. “For instance,” he said at one point, consider Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse, one of the greatest stars in the whole system, can be photographed merely by means of one ray of light. . . .” According to one account, the executive called his casting director and demanded that he go out and “get this Betelgeuse character under contract. Albert Einstein knows everything, and he says [Betelgeuse] is one of the greatest stars in the business!” (from homileticsonline.com)!

Einstein’s friend might have been an expert on Hollywood “stars” but he clearly didn’t “see the light” about Betelgeuse!

    Have you “seen the light?” The gospel light, that is! Isaac Watts reminds us where to look – “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, And the burden of my heart was rolled away. It was there by faith I received my sight, And now I am happy all the day” (chorus Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?; 1707).  Long before Watt’s strung those magnificent words together, the apostle John described Jesus Christ as “the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world” (John 1:9).

Sadly, John goes on to write that many in the world failed to see that Light.

Even though some people’s minds are blinded to it by the “god of this age,” the gospel is the light God shines “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:3-6). To “see the light” means to come to understand something clearly, especially after an initial period of confusion. The apostle Paul told King Agrippa that Christ had called and chosen him to go to the Gentiles and “open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among all those who are sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 26:18).

The gospel accounts record a number of cases when Jesus enabled the blind to see. One case is in Matthew 20:29-34. Matthew’s brief report features two blind men who saw something a huge crowd of seeing people around them failed to see. As Jesus passed by on the road they were sitting beside, they began to cry out in desperation, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David.” And when some in the crowd warned them to be quiet and “put a sock in it,” the Bible said “they cried out all the more, saying, ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David.’ ” There are many things we are not told here. But what is clear is that these two men had heard about Jesus and His ability to bring God’s power to bear in the lives of people who were suffering from sickness or sin or both. And though they were, till that day, blind as bats, they had seen the light through what they had heard!

Incomplete as their understanding might yet be, they knew Jesus was no mere mortal. Though physically blind, they “saw the light” about Jesus! The result was, “Jesus had compassion, and touched their eyes. And immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him.”

    Have you seen the light?

    “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in

    darkness, but have the light of life” - Jesus, John 8:12

          by Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN