Your Divinity
Posted on | October 12, 2010 | No Comments
Your Divinity
The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. John 17: 22-23.
I believe we’re each accountable for our own spark of divinity.
I was at church on the second Sunday of Advent last season and the pastor spoke about the child of light coming to the earth. He used a story about some high-school kids on a retreat camping in the mountains and noticing how bright the stars looked. Their retreat leader changed their perspective by stating, “the stars aren’t so bright – it’s the world that’s very dark. It is our role as Christians to reflect the light of Christ into the darkness of the world around us.”
I thought about the whole idea of pinpoints of light in the darkness. Most of those points of light are VERY powerful, blazing stars in the darkness of space. I thought the Pastor’s point about our duty to reflect the light of Christ into the darkness of the world may have missed the mark. Instead of reflecting the light of Christ, maybe our role is to BE a light in the darkness – like Christ. After all, isn’t the point Jesus was trying to make simply that there is a “Christ” in each of us waiting to be found and brought back to God’s light?
Thinking further it’s easy to see why the reflection idea might be important, after all, the brightest lights in our Earthly darkness are the moon and our neighboring planets that do simply reflect the light of the Sun. Some of the brightest people around me seem to reflect the light of God’s Son. But are the people who reflect the light more powerful than those individual sources of light that happen to be further away, but bring a light of their own to far larger volumes of darkness? I don’t know the answer, or if one answer exists. Maybe at times we are called to be sources of light in the vast darkness, and sometimes we are called to reflect a closer light for the path of those closest to us who are wandering in the darkness. Maybe we need to be doing both at all times.
The Christmas service was themed around the light of God becoming man. The original celebration was on the winter solstice, when light physically returns to warm the Earth in the form of longer days. This time our Senior Pastor was giving the message, and themed his message as one of Christmas being a time to remember that the light of divinity descended into humankind. Predictably, but no less disappointingly, the Pastor’s interpretation of this idea was that divinity descended into that one baby – Jesus of Nazareth – and no other human. I believe divinity descended into him, as it has into ALL humans.
What if Christmas was celebrated as the reminder of the divinity in each human? How much better would our world be if each of us were accountable for the spark of divinity God gave each of us?
Comments
Book Recommendations
About Kevin
Kevin E. Houchin is an attorney, artist, teacher, author, and principal of
Houchin Consulting, PLLC, a copyright, trademark, arts & entertainment,
business development, and branding firm located in Scottsdale, Arizona.
To schedule Kevin for keynote speeches, workshops, or seminars, call 970.231.2426
or email
kevin@kevinhouchin.com.