Let the Light in
From Matthew 6 – 22 The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
As a cheapskate in a wheelchair, I do almost all of my travel vicariously through the writing of the New Yorker. The trip with James Lasdun to see the northern lights through his eyes in the April 29, 2019 issue was particularly illuminating.
Lasdun compared the different impression the phenomenon makes in person to what pictures lead travelers to expect. Photographers can wait out clouds and still capture splendid shots. Travelers on a once-in-a-lifetime journey to the Arctic may not come with this expectation. The camera, it turns out, can capture much more light than the human eye. This means that photographic images of the northern lights, even if they aren't retouched, tend to be more vivid than anything the in-person experience can convey.
From there, it's not a far journey to Jesus' words in Matthew 6:22-23. When the lenses of our eyes and our souls don't let in the full splendor of God's glory around us, and they never do, disappointment is inevitable. We were created to be wowed by Him. When we don't get the full experience in every trek, we lug a sense of perpetual disappointment.
To carry the metaphor a bit farther, we address this disappointment with the same technology that captures the northern lights at their best. With cell phones and social media, feed our souls on what Francesca Battistelli sings in "Let the Light In" we go in knowing is a highlight reel. We set our expectations on the self-selected and technology-edited experience of others.
When our day-to-day experience doesn't measure up to what we see from others, or what our inflated expectations lead us to demand, the darkness seems darker somehow. Even the subtle glory of God which He, by His grace, allows to penetrate life's clouds and filtered through our distorted assumptions, it doesn't seem like enough. Gratitude is dispelled more quickly than the splendor of the skies.
As a cheapskate in a wheelchair, I do almost all of my travel vicariously through the writing of the New Yorker. The trip with James Lasdun to see the northern lights through his eyes in the April 29, 2019 issue was particularly illuminating.
Lasdun compared the different impression the phenomenon makes in person to what pictures lead travelers to expect. Photographers can wait out clouds and still capture splendid shots. Travelers on a once-in-a-lifetime journey to the Arctic may not come with this expectation. The camera, it turns out, can capture much more light than the human eye. This means that photographic images of the northern lights, even if they aren't retouched, tend to be more vivid than anything the in-person experience can convey.
From there, it's not a far journey to Jesus' words in Matthew 6:22-23. When the lenses of our eyes and our souls don't let in the full splendor of God's glory around us, and they never do, disappointment is inevitable. We were created to be wowed by Him. When we don't get the full experience in every trek, we lug a sense of perpetual disappointment.
To carry the metaphor a bit farther, we address this disappointment with the same technology that captures the northern lights at their best. With cell phones and social media, feed our souls on what Francesca Battistelli sings in "Let the Light In" we go in knowing is a highlight reel. We set our expectations on the self-selected and technology-edited experience of others.
When our day-to-day experience doesn't measure up to what we see from others, or what our inflated expectations lead us to demand, the darkness seems darker somehow. Even the subtle glory of God which He, by His grace, allows to penetrate life's clouds and filtered through our distorted assumptions, it doesn't seem like enough. Gratitude is dispelled more quickly than the splendor of the skies.
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