We Christians are looking at the darkness when we should be looking at the light

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!–Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew 6:22-23.

The problem these days is not the darkness in the world.

When has the world not been dark?

The Christ taught his apprentices and students to choose light, not to fixate and focus on the darkness of the world.

We are to choose what we see, which is another way of saying that we are to choose what we believe.

We can choose to see the darkness in the world. When we choose to see that darkness, we also choose to believe in the darkness. To believe in the darkness is to attribute power to it, to have a relationship with it, to let it take up space in our minds which leads to it taking up space in our souls.

We let the darkness in merely be choosing to fix our eyes on it.

This is how Christians get lost and turn into agents of hell. We fixate on darkness. We kindle our moral outrage over the immorality of the world. We look for conspiracies in every current event, demons hiding behind every bush and lamppost. We strategize against the powers and principalities and, in the process, we end up just like them.

The more we stare into the darkness, the more the darkness fills our souls.

Our Christ taught us to choose to use our eyes for something else.

As apprentices and students of our Christ, we are to choose to believe in the light, to look for the light, to turn toward the light as flowers bend their faces toward the sun.

This is not to say that the darkness is not there; it is to say that we overcome the darkness, not by looking at it, but by looking through it to the Light.

We choose how and what we see.

And how and what we choose to see determines what we become.

Practice the teaching of the Christ: Choose to see light.

Choose to see light in the wonder of the natural world.

Choose to see light in every human being who bears the image of God.

Choose to see light in every event, for every event bears a chance for glory, grace, love, and mercy.

Choose to see light in yourself, for you are the beloved of God and God’s breath and heartbeat and light is alive in you.

Choose to see light and you will be full of light.

This is the Way.

Grace and peace.