God Is Light!

Each of us is a mirror fragment. We are not the Light. We are not the source of the Light. We are simply a broken mirror fragment. But when we permit the SON to hit our mirror fragment, and then bounce off into the life of a darkened heart, there can be change, there can be illumination.

(Contributed to Sermon Central by: Matt Black)

I...Light Inspires!

Notice the last part of verse 5 and verse 6. “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” (NKJV) When we are inspired by God’s light and our relationship with Him, we will live a different lifestyle.

Have you ever walked out on a moonlit night and gazed up into the Heavens? The sight of that beautiful sight will lift your spirits. That light inspires you.

Have you ever read about someone who has a near death experience? Maybe the person has a heart attack and dies for a few brief seconds. Maybe the person is killed in a car wreck and is brought back to life after a few seconds. In most every one of those situations there is a common story. The people who experience the near death episode come back to describe a warm light that attracted them. I believe that is the light of God’s presence drawing them. Light has that affect. It draws and inspires and people want to be near it. John teaches us in verses 5 & 6 that people who walk in God’s light want to have fellowship with Him.

Ill- In the nineteenth century, lighthouses on the U.S. coasts were tended by lighthouse keepers and their families. If a man who tended the light took ill or became disabled, often the work was picked up by his wife or children. Such was the case of Hosea Lewis.

Having become, in 1853, the keeper of the light on Lime Rock Island at Newport, Rhode Island, Lewis suffered a stroke four years later, at which time his teenage daughter Ida assumed responsibility for the light. Each day included cleaning the reflectors, trimming the wick, and filling the oil reservoir at sunset and midnight, along with providing for her father’s care.

With long and demanding tasks, Ida was unable to continue her schooling, but daily delivered her siblings to class, whatever the weather, by rowing the 500 yards to the mainland. In the mid-1800s, it was unusual to see a woman maneuvering a boat, but Ida became well-skilled and well-known for handling the heavy craft.

The teenager gained a measure of fame at age sixteen when she rescued four young men after their boat capsized. She rowed to their aid, hearing their screams as they clung to their overturned craft. On March 29, 1869, Ida saved two drowning servicemen from nearby Fort Adams. Public knowledge of Ida’s courage spread as far as Washington, inspiring President Ulysses S. Grant to visit Ida at Newport later that year. Ida rescued another two soldiers in 1881, for which she was awarded the U.S. Lifesaving Service’s highest medal.

In early February of that year the two soldiers were crossing from Newport to Lime Rock Island on foot when the ice gave way. Ida, the lighthouse keeper, came running with a rope. Ignoring peril to herself from weak and rotten ice, she pulled one, then the other to safety. All told, Ida Lewis personally saved something like 25 people in fifty-plus years of keeping the light. Her last reported rescue came at age 63 when she saved a friend who had fallen into the water on her way to visit Ida on the island.