The Light of the World

"Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?" - Maurice Freehill

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." - Chinese Proverb

"There are two kinds of light - the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures." - James Thurber

Sometimes I think it's great to look at the wisdom of humans before I dive into a spiritual topic. As wrong as we can be sometimes, there is still some great stuff that has been said.

Today at Park Hill Baptist Church in both our college fellowship and our main sermon we looked deep into LIGHT - and it's importance in our lives. We looked at 1 John 1:

"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." - 1 John 1:5

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." - 1 John 1:7

We also looked at Matthew 25:

The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

"At midnight the cry rang out: 'Here's the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!'
"Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸The foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.'
" 'No,' they replied, 'there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.'

"But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. - Matthew 25: 4-10

We got to talking about what this light really meant. If God is light and light leads us into fellowship, then light is our sharing of the goodness of God, that is sharing the fact that Christ was here in the flesh and is our hope. Even more, though, it is following in the footsteps of that fleshly Christ who showed us that it is was possible to live in the flesh and live in the light. So what is it then? It is living like Christ did, which means sharing living like Christ did. We need to shine our lights. We need to be open, honest, and exposed to the world; and what is exposed should be the goodness and love of Christ himself. Our oil should be plenty because we draw from the Holy Spirit. If we run low, it is of our own foolishness. Our wicks should be trimmed. The charred part that build up from our old lives needs to be cut off. Only the pure burning part should remain. The charred part will come so we need to be ready to trim. We're not denying our imperfections, but we're cleaning them away as they are made visible by the light. Pray that we can be accountable in this.

In His salvation,

The Voyager

"Park Hill Baptist Church", in reference to the church in Arkadelphia, AR, is the property of Park Hill Baptist Church, Arkadelphia. All else except the quoted content is the original content of Josie Stewart.
Copyright © 2010 Josie Stewart. All rights reserved.

Rethinking Things

[Edited to add bracketed comments below]

I realize that I have not always been very dedicated or consistent with this blog, and I apologize for that and for my lack of humility and better judgment. The whole reason I initially set out to write this was to Chronicle my Voyages of faith. I have been very lax--no, I have completely failed to do that. I want to tell you what the Voyager is doing now, starting with the events that led me to rethink why I post here.

[Lack of humility--very much so. That said, the blog was supposed be about life and not just faith, and I think I was going through a time of peer pressure from church to be more "churchy".]

Prayer is one of the most essential, driving elements of my life. Along with the reading of the word of God, prayer is what keeps me devoted and focused. For this reason and the sake of my future journey--which I will explain more at a later time--I asked God, before I even came to college, to give me a strong group of guys here to pray with consistently.

[I honestly can't say I even understood what really meaningful prayer was at the time. That is, I knew all the details that evangelicalism taught me thoroughly, but I no longer find that concept meaningful. Prayer as a meditation on the communion of life through the vehicle of the mind could be helpful, but I would not place it as an essential element of life. I no longer agree with the theology that uses the term word of God to refer to the texts known collectively as the Bible. Reading the Bible, on the other hand, was incredibly instrumental to my deconstruction, and Bible fluency continues to be useful for helping others of Christian heritage navigate unfundamentalist belief. I also wish to say that I reject the inherent patriarchal and binarist notions inherent in me supposedly requiring a group of guys specifically.]

My whole first semester I kept on begging him to raise up the group that I was not seeing. Toward the end of my second semester I began to doubt that I was going to see such a group in my first year as I had originally thought. God had not forgotten me. Not long after spring break God rose up a group of guys and revealed them to me--all ready to pray. We kept in touch over the summer and now that we are back together we meet to pray every day. At first we thought it impossible, perhaps even unnecessary, but the more we prayed together, the more we realized it was necessary and we did have the time. So every day now at 10 pm we pray--we pour out our emotions, our requests, our frustrations, and our praises to God with each other.

And now God has led us to raise up a similar group among our friends--among the girls that have expressed interest in our prayer group. This is the first thing that brought me here: our body has begun to grow and it is properly planting a new body as it should. Tonight is the meeting in which we will bring together these girls. Pray that it will be holy and fruitful. Pray that as these girls meet to pray with us and as these two groups pray together, that more groups of guys and girls will be planted.

[More patriarchy and binarism...sigh]

Not long after the idea of this new plant came to me and my brother-in-Christ (that I will here call the Asker), a wasp flew up from by the benches, as we walked away, and stung me on the palm of my hand. So today my entire hand and wrist are swollen so that even typing these words to you now is a stretch. This is the second thing that brought me here: seeking something to pass the time as I let my hand heal.

But my blog was not the first thing I thought of when going to the Internet to pass the time. After stumbling aimlessly around different sites, I went to YouTube and was reminded of the ministry of some older brothers and sisters in a foreign country. This was the last straw that broke the camel's back--that is, my pride. I at last remembered my initial purpose for this blog and immediately dashed here (typed in the URL) to tell you all this. Now I hope that from here on I can continue to tell you about my prayer group, my ministry, and what God has done that has made him great.

If you are reading this now, know that I am praying for you. Grace and peace to you in the Lord Jesus Christ who sees your pain and listlessness, as he has mine.

In His salvation,
The Voyager

Copyright © 2009-2020 Josie Stewart. All rights reserved.

Follower of Jesus on the Mozilla Staff

Gervase Markham, one of the staff members of Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/about/staff), is a believer and proudly professes so on his blog: http://www.gerv.net/hacking/why-hacking-for-christ.html. Here's a link to his blog "Hacking for Christ": http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/. I just thought it was really neat when I found out that one of the Mozilla staff was a Christian (another reason to use Fire fox ;). I contacted him and let him know what I thought. I also asked if there were any other believers on the Mozilla team. He said that there were not many and that it was a very needy mission field. I guess more people like me (aspiring programmers) need take up our task and share the hope we have with those in the fields we are entering (programming). Anyway, I just thought I'd share that. :)

(Edited to note that I now disagree with the late Gervase Markham's theology, and I also disagree with the colonialist theology I employed in this post.)

"Mozilla" and "Firefox" are the trademarks of the Mozilla Foundation. "Hacking for Christ" is the property of the estate of Gervase Markham. All else is the original content of Josie Stewart.
Copyright © 2008-2020 Josie Stewart. All rights reserved.