Clay in the Hands

We are starting a new Bible study class this Sunday and I am excited to see what God is going to do.  We have been busy this week preparing the room that will house the new class.  We have painted and cleaned and moved furniture.

One of the downsides to having a church that will celebrate 100 years in a little over a year is that the building is not new.  The lighting in the new class room was original to the building and gave the ambiance of a remote cave at Carlsbad Caverns.

So part of the room renovation involved taking down the old, single bulb light fixtures and putting up new florescent lighting.  On Tuesday, my oldest son and I tackled that project.  But the first thing we learned is that those old 200 watt bulbs put off some heat.  We turned the lights off and then turned the breaker off to the room and got ready to take the old fixtures down.  The fixtures were so hot, we could not touch them.  We had to wait 20 minutes to begin the process.  Once they cooled down, we were able to remove the old fixtures, install the new ones and increase the amount of light in the room by at least 150%.

Yesterday, I ran across this quote from Woodrow Wilson that went along with our experience with the lights.  He said,  “One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”  What a great thought!

So often, we try to offer our guidance or wisdom to a person in need and in the process of shedding light on the subject, we also apply heat.  It is all in the way we go about it and our attitude toward the situation.

Think of it in relation to how Jesus followers are often perceived by the world.  The media does not find stories of Mother Teresa’s self-sacrificial, illuminating work nearly as news worthy as a fundamentalist group burning the Korán or torching an abortion clinic.

Don’t get me wrong, physics would tell us that a by-product of producing light is nearly always heat.  But I can tell you that the new florescent lights put off a lot more light than the old ones and half the heat.

We need to focus on being light for a dark world without driving people away because they can’t stand the heat.

Go be light today!