I want to walk as a child of the light

An ear-worm and an analogy

a street lamp lighting up a dark street | Photo by Jonas Verstuyft on Unsplash

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 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 cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:5-7

Some mornings it takes me a bit of time to get the ear worm of a song based on a verse I’m reading out of my head so that I can start writing. (Or one similar - I think this one is more a mashup of the verses above and one from Revelation, but it’s the snippet of the phrase from 1 John that brings it to mind. “In Him, there is no darkness at all / The night and the day are both alike / The Lamb is the light of the city of God / Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus” I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light Sorry, not sorry, if you know the hymn and now have it stuck in your head too.)

Technically the reading was 1 John 1:1-5, but I usually will read before and after, especially if it seems like the passage starts or stops in the middle of an idea. Which is how God caught my attention with this in the Bible Knowledge Commentary:

It is significant that John talked of walking in the light, rather than according to the light. To walk according to the light would require sinless perfection and would make fellowship with God impossible for sinful humans. To walk in it, however, suggests instead openness and responsiveness to the light.

My mental image is being on a pitch-black street at night. Until we step into the light of a street lamp, we can’t see how dirty we have gotten (bear with me - in my analogy, it’s a dirty street and somehow we’ve ended up looking like Pig-Pen from the Peanuts cartoon) or how far away we have wandered away from God, who is standing there waiting for us.

God’s light shows us where we are sinning. Without it, we wouldn’t know that we have wandered away from him or where we are falling short. Yes, by virtue of being a Christian we are forgiven and seen as clean, but there’s also a desire to fix the broken parts of our life that keep us away from God so that we can more fully enjoy our relationship with him and each other. That relationship with each other, modeled after our relationship with God, looks like living in harmony with each other, caring for each other, being each others’ safety net when life inevitably happens. How far the world is still fallen, and how much it really needs God’s light.