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Shedding light — on light

There’s a subject I’d like to shed a little light on — light. To say that there are a lot of lights in the Smith house is akin to saying there’s a lot of sand on the beach; a gross understatement.

I’m not sure of the builder’s motivation. Maybe he was afraid of the dark as a little child, or perhaps he aspired to a career on Broadway. Whatever the reason behind it, when he built our house, he put in a multitude of lights.

For example, there’s a bar of spotlights hanging from the living room ceiling, another smaller bar in the master bedroom, two wall sconces on either side of the mantle, round built-in lights above the breakfast bar in the dining room, and even miniature lights in some of the kitchen cupboards.

On top of all these, there are overhead lights in every room of the house.

Just to make things interesting, all of the light switches are located in hard-to-find places.

Add to that the fact that they aren’t actually “switches” in the conventional sense, but little round discs that need to be pushed in or turned clockwise and counter clockwise.

As one might imagine, this can cause quite a bit of confusion, with one or the other of us pushing when we should be turning or moving counter clockwise when we should be going the other direction.

It’s so complicated, in fact, that when my sister, Debi, visits from Ohio, she has me turn the lights out before she goes to bed because she can’t figure it out. Just to put things in perspective, Debi’s a college graduate with a high-level job in a hospital lab, but our labyrinth of lighting is beyond her navigation.

Location and operation aside, our chief complaint is being unable to keep all the lights lit. Because there are so many to keep track of, one or another is always burning out.

The other day, we noticed that every one of the spotlights in the bar in the living room had burned out, making things pretty gloomy. Swinging into action, my husband, Bob, grabbed a box of new light bulbs and a stepladder and set about replacing each light. The finished result was dazzling!

It turned out the new bulbs were of a much higher wattage than the previous ones. As we stood back and admired Bob’s handiwork, Bob, our daughter, Val, and I began to notice a strong burning smell.

Apparently, the new bulbs’ wattage was too high.

Seeing no alternative, Bob once again grabbed the stepladder and removed each bulb, leaving us in semi-darkness.

There are all kinds of lights in the world; some are hard to locate, some too dark for much illumination, and some that burn bright for a while then become extinguished.

God’s Word has much to say about light.

We Christians are called to not hide our light under a bushel, but be a light unto the world, shining with the presence of Jesus within us.

Is your light a steady beacon that illuminates the love of Christ in you?

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