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!
When I was a kid, we always looked forward to visits from my mother’s Aunt Dale. Aunt Dale was an encourager! When you were around Aunt Dale, you just felt better about yourself and your situation. Aunt Dale spent her life teaching grade school to fortunate little kids, and she knew exactly how to bring out the best in everyone. Our only complaint with Aunt Dale was that her visits were always too short. She was so afraid of being a bother that we had to drop everything and quickly concentrate on her visit, or she would leave. Dad would even come in from field work to visit with Aunt Dale, and for an Illinois farmer, that was an enormous compliment!
Some people are delightful! Whenever you are around them, you feel like smiling. Your whole day brightens when you are with these people; their goodness shines from their eyes because they are full of love and grace and mercy. Jesus was advising his listeners that if God filled their hearts with His love, this was how they would appear to others.
A lady recently being baptized was asked by a co-worker what it was like to be a Christian. She replied, “It’s like being a pumpkin:
God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off you may have gotten from the other pumpkins.
Then he cuts the top off and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc.
Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.”
(Borrowed from http://www.dltk-bible.com/how_a_christian_is_like_a_pumpki.htm)
What is inside you is going to come out. One Christian comedian was fond of saying that he always hated it when someone would say, “I want to tell you this in love.” Invariably, the next thing out of their mouths would NOT be loving. He said, “If what you are about to say is loving, I will know it. If what you say is NOT loving, I will know that also!” God wants us to become so close to Him that when we talk or even look at people, they will see love and grace and mercy and not judgement.
PRAYER: God, forgive us for the times when people have seen hatred or judgement coming from our eyes! So fill us with your Holy Spirit that people will see you and not us when we look at them. We thank you and bless your Name, now and forever. Amen.
And my favorite Aunt Dale story: Aunt Dale was a lady who never left the house without being properly dressed. She lived to be 102. One night the nurse at her assisted living home came in to find Aunt Dale sitting on her couch fully dressed and properly groomed as if she were about to go to church. When asked why Aunt Dale had dressed up at 7:30 in the evening, she replied, “Well, they’re coming for me tonight and I must be ready.” The nurse was perplexed but encouraged Aunt Dale to remove her shoes and lie down on the sofa for a small nap until “they” should come. At 9:30 when the nurse looked in on Aunt Dale, Aunt Dale was dead. Indeed, the angels had come for Aunt Dale, and she had gone home to be with Jesus. Lord, please let me be like Aunt Dale! Please let me be ready to come with you when you call!
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