Jesus said to his disciples,
You are the salt of the earth,
But if salt becomes tasteless,
What can make it salty again?
It is good for nothing,
And can only be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men.
You are the light of the world.
A city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden.
No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub.
They put it on the lampstand,
Where it shines for everyone in the house.
In the same way,
Your light must shine in the sight of men,
So that,
Seeing your good works,
They may give the praise to your Father in heaven.
The gospel of the Lord prays to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
I am but one.
What can I do?
I see and I realize through interactions with people that the last couple of months have taken an interesting toll on humanity.
And in my side of the world,
In my interactions with people,
People are overwhelmed.
Bad news everywhere.
It's almost so much that you don't have time to process the one crisis,
And then the next one happens,
And the next one happens,
And the next one happens,
And we've become so used to the fact that it's just crisis upon crisis upon crisis,
And bad news upon bad news upon bad news,
That it's become the norm,
And we don't sit with each piece of news anymore.
And we just allow these things to wash over us,
And we think,
Yeah,
I'll deal with it later.
I'll deal with it later.
And it just builds up and builds up and builds up,
And slowly we find ourselves becoming more and more negative,
And more and more helpless,
And we feel more and more helpless because there is this mountain of stuff,
This mountain of stuff.
People are being murdered.
People are corrupt.
People are being misused and abused,
And it's just so much,
God.
You're.
.
.
I don't think that world news is always necessarily a good thing,
Especially with this mountain of sadness,
Of doubt,
Of pain that we are faced with,
Because we have access to each other's pain,
Which we can share if we allow it,
And we'll get to that in a little bit.
But we are so bombarded because we don't only know about our little corner of the world anymore,
We know about the whole world.
And it's beautiful to be able to do a WhatsApp phone call,
A video call with my friend in New Zealand once a month,
Because otherwise I would never have been able to see him.
But it's how I apply,
Where I find my focus,
That's the challenge,
Because right after that phone call of joy,
I go on to a new site,
And oh golly gosh,
What a mistake that is.
Jesus says to his disciples that you are the salt of the earth,
You are the very thing that needs to give the earth flavor,
So that the rest of the world,
Salt can't taste itself,
So that the rest of the world can find flavor in life.
And once you become so overwhelmed that you give up,
You lose your flavor,
You move into a zombie state of just surviving.
And I believe that we can actually become salty again if we come out of that state,
But then we are reborn as a new creature and we are salty and full of flavor-giving nourishment again.
Salt,
Of course,
Not only gives flavor,
Salt is made up of so many minerals,
I'm not talking about the junk that we buy these days in the shops,
I'm talking about salt of the earth,
Proper,
Proper,
Proper salt,
Is filled with so many minerals that it's not just there for flavor,
But salt gives life.
The minerals that we get from the salt are so sorely needed in our bodies so that we can thrive.
And so Jesus doesn't just mean that you are there to give flavor,
But you are there to give life to your fellow beings.
You are there to allow them and to help them thrive.
You are the light of the world.
And with everything that's going on,
It feels like we are in a very,
Very deep,
Dark time.
And maybe we are,
And maybe it's no different than 100 years ago or 200 years ago.
It is just that we are aware of the dark.
We are aware of the dark and we are so scared of it.
That's very true.
We are so scared of the nothingness that we forget that the dark is also a part of God.
God is not absent in the dark at all.
We just maybe have this label of God having to be a light being.
And so much so that we forget that God encompasses the dark as well as the light because God is not duality.
But we are so scared of the dark and we were given this task to be light.
We were given this responsibility to bring light into this world.
But we are scared,
So scared that somebody will just look at me funny and maybe,
Maybe if I shine my light,
What if I shine my light and the dark swallows me?
What if I am lost in the dark because the world is so big and it's so filled with darkness that my little light,
It's going to go nowhere.
Let's take a step back from the planet or let's take a deeper step into the planet earth and we take a deeper step into the country that we live in.
The continent and then the country.
And in the province or the area that we live in and then the city or the town or the farm or wherever we live in and then the house that we live in or the place that we live in or the cardboard box that we live in and let us go into that space and become aware of that space.
And become aware of the moment that is right now.
And in that moment of space of time of being aware,
If we can become aware of the fact that we are shining a light and it's not just a metaphysical principle,
We are actually human beings emit light.
We can't see it necessarily,
But we do emit light.
It's in the infrared range.
We emit infrared light.
And so,
Know it or not,
Like it or not,
You are light,
You are shining light.
How do I then apply this?
How do I know that I have this light,
But what do I do with it?
Jesus gives us a very direct instruction.
You put the lamp on the lampstand where it shines for everyone in the house,
Not on the planet,
In the house.
We're taking a bit of a reverse road from what he said.
So in the same way your light must shine in the sight of men,
So that seeing your good works they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.
I shine my light right where I am and I am not necessarily going to,
With my light,
Reach out to Mongolia.
I might.
Insight Timer has brought many beautiful people together,
But it might not go there.
But maybe I might shine my light on somebody that I meet and that person meets somebody and that person meets somebody and they pay forward the joy in some way or another and it reaches a pilot that goes out to Mongolia and there it meets the person indirectly.
I don't know,
But if I keep my light away,
I'm like,
I'm not going to talk to you.
I'm scared.
How's that going to help?
Jesus says something very interesting because he starts with,
You are the light of the world.
And then he talks about a city built on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.
And then he goes into the home.
But if every person in my community can start shining a light and we can share the light,
Then we become the city on the hilltop.
We become a city so big,
So filled with light that you can see it from outer space.
Maybe,
Just maybe,
The light that I shine now,
Just that little piece of compassion that I share with the person next to me,
Might just be the spark that ignites the city.
And it'll burn out.
We know that.
But there's always the hope of that next little spark.
And the next.
This is an ongoing thing.
It's not,
Here I shine my light and I burn out.
Every day we are given the opportunity to choose to shine light.
And sometimes we find ourselves in times of sadness,
Times of sorrow,
Times of pain.
Some of us suffer with chronic pain,
Chronic diseases.
Your light is just as sacred.
It's no less sacred.
Because of the suffering,
Those who shine their light from within suffering,
They do so actually quite a lot stronger.
Because they have the opportunity,
And I'm not glorifying suffering at all,
Please don't think I'm doing that,
But being able to connect to your light and to shine your light and to bring compassion to somebody,
If you are yourself in a position of suffering,
Means that you are offering that suffering to God.
And maybe not despite our suffering,
But because of our suffering,
And from within our suffering,
We can praise God.
Because we know that if we call,
God answers.
And God doesn't say,
Oh,
Here,
Let me come down to you,
My child.
When we call,
God answers in the sense of,
I am here.
When we call,
God,
All we do is become aware of the presence of God.
The light that we shine is nothing other than the light of God.
How beautiful is that?
I pray that you will become more and more aware of the light that you are carrying,
The divinity that you are carrying,
And as you become aware of that divinity,
That you can actually become aware of the fact that you can share it.
And that in sharing that,
We are doing what our Lord asked us to do.
Amen.
