Truth and Light

May 6

(Psalms 43:1-5 NIV) "Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men. {2} You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? {3} Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. {4} Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God. {5} Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

(Ephesians 5:8-9 NIV) “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light {9} (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)”

The darker it gets, the brighter a candle appears to shine. The truth rises like a tower in a world filled with lies. As a nation becomes more ungodly and its people grow more deceitful and wicked, light and truth become targets to eliminate. Light and truth draw people to God, or they drive people deeper into hiding. That’s because sin cannot survive in the presence of God’s light and truth. If we cherish sin or despise God, we will work to extinguish light and truth, or we will hide from it in some way. As believers, we do not get to choose the response that people have to God’s light and truth; we only get to choose whether or not we lift them up and share them. We only get to choose whether or not we will become targets to eliminate. David had lived as a hunted man. He lived with the despair of being a target, but he did not stop shining and speaking truth. Neither should we. -- Friar Tuck’s Word of the Day