Let Your Light Shine

In the Gospel reading for today, Jesus, after seeing His crowd of followers, sits down and decides to teach them. Something He saw in the people propelled Jesus to take the time to sit down on the side of a mountain and teach what we would come to know as the Sermon on the Mount. In part of this teaching, Jesus leads the people through a series of statements highlighting the blessings of divine happiness.  One of these blessings reveals how deeply Jesus cares about and understands the nature of our human hearts. He desires our holiness so that we might share in the Father’s Kingdom with Him. According to Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.” 

It is an act of humility to consider the cleanliness of our hearts. But like a smudged window, darkened gradually by grime, our hearts can and do become sullied by sin. This shadowing of heart space can happen subtly, almost imperceptibly. And just as it’s hard to see the view through a grime-covered window, it is hard to recognize God at work in our lives when the view from our hearts has become blocked. The light simply struggles to filter in.

In today’s first reading, the prophet Zephaniah urges the people to seek God.  He speaks of those who see the Lord, a people “humble and lowly,” a remnant chosen by God who “shall do no wrong and speak no lies; nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue”. These, the remnant, are people of a clean heart. 

This level of humility is challenging, but today Psalm 146 also assures us the Lord is working for the good of the lowly, for our good, and will keep faith forever. We need not be afraid to consider the state of hearts—the Lord is with us, and in Him we can (and should) take refuge. Paul, too, reminds us in his letter to the people of Corinth that the chosen are called not through any merits of their own, but to fulfill God’s mission. Imagine our hearts as magnificent stained glass adorning a cathedral. The more we allow the light to shine through them, the more God’s glory is illuminated.

Today, let us make every effort to tend to our whole hearts so that as we seek God, we might also see Him. Just as the simple attention to the task of cleaning a window can make it shine and sparkle, so too that type of attention applied to the care of our own hearts will allow God’s light to move through freely. And suddenly the view becomes very clear.

By Raine Pyne