Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
~ Psalm 97:11
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
~ John 1:1-5
Light is that which makes things visible. Light is a catalyst of reality. Light creates a connection validating one thing’s existence to another. Light is a vital transmitter of truth.
G_d is Light, and in Him no darkness dwells.
As we come to know Him more intimately, we see that His Light is not just some quantity of energy that shines upon us, enabling us to walk without stumbling. Rather, His Light is a full-spectrum torrent of life, truth, joy, goodness, purpose, hope and power that courses onto, over and through our being.
Soon, it seems that we learn and know and go and grow at phenomenal rates sometimes. The throughput on the massive volume of His truth flowing in our lives seems impossible. There just seems to be no way that we could be learning and living and receiving so much from Him at once.
Like, how could so much data come through any pipe? We’ve all lived through dial-up internet access, and moved through ISDN, to DSL and into now wireless and cable broadband connections. The bandwidth of modern connections is amazing, but even they have limitations.
One technology gives some insight – perhaps – into the flow of G_d’s glorious light in our lives. Wavelength-division multiplexing is a fancy term used to describe how information now flows through fiber-optic cables. WDM theory is simple: Data can flow through a fiber-optic cable at about 10 Gbit/s (Billion bits per second) (really fast). But, wait a minute… that flow is 10 Gbit/s along one tiny sliver of the color rainbow. So, as technology develops lights that can shine in lots of different colors all at once, information flow has multiplied 160 times across one little fiber-optic cable to a jaw-dropping 1.6 Tbit/s (Trillion bits per second). This is an immense flow of potential information. But this is only the beginning, and technology will surely improve this substantially over time.
What’s all this about? It’s a shadow… A shadow of how He communicates through His Light with us.
Every bit of Light He sends our way is imbued with the full-counsel of Himself. Everything that reaches us is from an Infinite Source and carries Infinite possibility. And each of these threads of Light that He pours into our lives do not interfere with each other. In fact, they are beautiful compliments that build upon each other without taking up more space – or even seemingly – more flow.
Actually beloved, “bandwidth” is not really a consideration in the flow of His Light in our lives. We begin to see that living in His presence is not about two beings being near each other in a similar place. Rather, it is about the truth that two have become one. Utterly. He does not send messages to us across some huge-throughput information highway. All of the Light of who He is, is already here in us – right here and right now.
This is truth. We are literally bathing in the very light of the One who is Light.
How could we ever want to live in darkness again? There is nothing there that we really want.
~Revelation 22:1-5
glen… reminds me of Philippians 3:8-11… Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.