The LIght has come into the world

When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was wild and waste,

formless and chaotic -- but the breath of God hovered over the abyss.

And God spoke:  Light, Be!

And Light Was!

But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned about that great city?  (God, to Jonah -- 4:11)

In the opening chapter of Genesis, Light enters a dark, chaotic, "wild and waste" (in the Hebrew) world and begins to transform the chaos into order, harmony, and beauty.  The next nine chapters, however, portray a world descending once again into chaos, ending in Chapter 11 with chaos and confusion -- a "babbling" of tongues and nations over the face of the earth.

Into this (once again) darkened world enters Abraham, one man called by God to a "new land," a land I will show you, called to be transformed from the culture of paganism into knowledge of the true God, called to be transformed by the Light of the world.  His transformation comes from walking with his God on a daily basis, learning to trust his God, seeing what his God will do for him.

The transformation does not occur all at once.  Abraham still walks partially in darkness, in not understanding, in not knowing exactly what he is supposed to do -- but also in experiencing the deliverance of His God in all circumstances of life. 

The story of the Jewish nation is the same.  God delivered them from the evil/darkness of slavery and brought them to a new land, giving them laws along the way and the Light of His standards --- oppress not the alien among you, for you yourselves were aliens in the land of Egypt; observe the Sabbeth as a day of rest for you, your slaves, and your animals; do not murder; do not be like the nations around you......

Always, always, the story is one of people being brought out of darkness (not knowing our left hands from our right) into the Light.  The story is one of gradual transformation from chaos to order, harmony, beauty.  We are all "on the way."  We are all in different stages of transformation by the Light of the World. 

The beauty of the Light is that we need only to come into it, to stand in it, to absorb it into our bodies, to "walk in the Light"  to find healing.  Jesus simplified all of the Law into two commandments:  Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, and your whole strength and Love your neighbor as yourself.  This is the Light of the World.  Anyone who walks in this light does not walk in darkness; anyone who walks in this light creates around him beauty, harmony, and order.  Anyone who walks in this light is being transformed daily "from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18).

It's not hard to stand in the sunshine, and the more of us who walk in the Light bring Light into a darkened and chaotic world.