“This Little Light of Mine”

"This little light of mine"

Years ago small children were taught a popular song—"This little light of mine." Not really heavy on theology, but actually loaded with meaning. Especially in the area of light.

At Zeandale we are going through Max Lucado's 3:16 in the morning Bible study. Today's lesson dealt with Hosea and Gomer. The focus was on Hosea's love for Gomer which was descriptive of the love God had for his people Israel. One of the greatest lessons we got from the lesson was the fact that God loves regardless of how people respond.

God's love is not exclusively for believers. We become believers by responding to God's love, but that doesn't change the fact that God loves unconditionally. Everything we have is a gift from God. Everything that the Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or evolutionist has is a gift from God. Whether or not people do not recognize the source of the gift does not change the fact about it's source.

There are believers who brag about their accomplishments. Sometimes they will include God up to the point that they must be very special in the sight of God because of all that God's for them. I used to have a good friend that no matter what I accomplished he did something either faster or better or he was obviously better blessed. Once I wrote him about some of medical experiences and his answer was to let me know that his medical experiences were worse than mine. The guy never changed!

Charles Chaffin led in the devotional time for the offering this morning and he focused on the fact that we have received light from God. Everyone receives light from God. Paul talks about this in Romans 1. So just like everyone receives everything they have from God, so also do they receive God's light as well. Charles suggested that the light could be seen in the fact that everyone has a conscience.

Again, it is a gift from God. If one studies anthropology he/she discovers that there is no culture without a moral system regardless of how "primitive" they may be. Where did they get their information? The earliest culture systems which began to use writing also developed legal codes. How did that happen? And how is that there are so many parallels found among the various legal systems? Some would suggest they just copied from one another. Even if they did copy they still recognized the value of a controlled value system.