Proverbs Experiment: Day Four

Proverbs Chapter Four:

The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which shines ever brighter until the full light of day. (vs. 18)

If you haven't figured out, I'm fascinated with the words "light" and "shine". A couple of years ago, I directed a Christmas performance called Shine, which was a fun (and hard) thing to put together. The name of my other blog is called the Re:light Campaign, which was created to help rekindle the fire of hope in the hearts of those who have been trafficked and/or sold into slavery, as well as relighting a passion in the hearts of followers of God to do something about it. On the back of one of the t-shirts I have designed, I used Isaiah 58:10 as the key verse: "Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be bright as noon." A couple of my favorite worship songs deal with the idea of light and shining (one of them, Mighty To Save, says, "Shine your light and let the whole world see...")

That's why verse 18 drew my attention. We as people who follow God have the opportunity to let our light shine in so many dark places. If you've ever noticed, just a little light can light up a lot of darkness; unfortunately, we can become so busy with fighting battles within our churches, and with focusing on ourselves, that we don't take the opportunity to shine our light.

When I drove back to Ohio from Colorado, I was in Illinois when the sun started coming up in the morning. At the same time this was happening, there was a pretty dense fog all over. This fog started in MIssouri, and almost caused me to hit a deer that decided that being in the middle lane of I-70 was the best place for him to be. When the sun started coming up, and it hit this fog, I noticed two things happening: One is that the water droplets in the fog was causing the light coming from the sun to intensify, which was pretty cool. It felt like I was driving into heaven or something, because there was light all around me. The second thing that happened was that the light from the sun started to make the fog dissipate. It was pretty amazing to see the light from the sun disperse everywhere around me.

This is what happens when we let our light shine - it disperses into the darkness around us and lights up more than we could ever imagine.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. (vs. 23)

There is an amazing book that I read at least once a year, by a man named Gordon MacDonald. You may have read his book "Ordering Your Private World", I know a lot of people who have. I don't remember when or where I picked up another book of his, called "The Life God Blesses," but I know that it has been a book that has really helped me understand how important it is to "live with more weight below the waterline then above it." Confusing, huh? Well, I've only sailed on a sailboat a couple of times in my life, so I didn't understand this concept until I read it in this book. In order for a sailboat to maintain a steady course, and in order for it not to capsize but to harness the tremendous power of the wind, there must be more weight below the waterline than there is above it.

MacDonald tells of a time when he explained this to someone who thought they had it all: success, achievement, bells and whistles, and yet still felt empty. He writes:

"He nods reflectively as he begins to perceive that he may have spent his years building up the rigging, the sails, and the mast of life. The good life: it's all there to be admired and enjoyed. But there's almost nothing below the waterline! Something deep within is empty, alone. For the first time in our conversations we have reached a point where we can begin to talk about a most mysterious dimension of life: the soul - the inner "place" that defies the best efforts of philosophers and theologians who seek a satisfying definition.

The soul, I suggest to him, is somewhere below the personal waterline. And it is easily ignored until the storms of life arise. And if there is no weight at the level of the soul, there is little to promise survival."

This is what it means, in my opinion, to guard your heart. To build up your soul. To develop weight below the waterline of your life. We spend most of our lives trying to achieve the outer trappings of success and fortune and we spend less of our lives on building the inner life, the weight below the waterline.

As Thomas Kelly writes,

"We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow...We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that center. We have seen and known some people who have found this deep Center of living, where the fretful calls of life are integrated, where NO as well as YES can be said with confidence."

When we guard our hearts, when we work on the weight of our lives below the waterline, it helps us see what God wants for our lives. And because our priorities are in order, we can say Yes to what truly is important and No to that which is not important.