October is one of my favorite months of the year. I love the harvest, the changing leaves, sweater weather and cozy evenings by a fire.
But October also brings a strange cultural fascination with death. Stores and front yards are filled with skulls, skeletons, and tombstones. It’s a celebration of fear and the grave.
It’s hard for me to see this as just harmless fun when real terror and death are all around us. The headlines are relentless: We see it. We feel it. The world seems darker by the day.
When faced with so much evil, it’s tempting to retreat — to lock our doors, scroll past the headlines, and hope it all goes away. Others respond by raging online, adding to the noise and the anger. We can feel either intimidated or infuriated–but neither response brings light to the darkness.
But Jesus has a better idea for us: You are the light of the world.
He didn’t call us to hide or to despair — He called us to shine.
My son-in-law recently reminded me of the advertising “Rule of 7” in terms of gospel response. The Rule of 7 is the suggestion that a person needs about 7 marketing exposures to a product before they will actually respond. The evangelical world has largely used this idea in promoting persistent witnessing in all environments in an effort to be one of these seven “touches” to help bring a person closer to Christ.
If so, then there are countless opportunities to be a light. Any time you have an opportunity to represent Jesus, be careful to represent him well. If your car has some kind of religious marking (bumper sticker, license plate, etc.) then you better be the most courteous and careful driver you possibly can. If you are buying groceries in your “Jesus Loves You” tshirt, then make sure you are polite and kind to those you encounter. If you are carrying your Bible in the coffee shop, be generous and tip well. These are behaviors we should do all the time–but even more conscientiously when visibly representing Christ.
Being a faithful witness for Jesus becomes even more impactful when done in the context of your existing networks and relationships.
If you work out with the same people at the gym, go ahead and ask about their weekend. And when they ask about yours, don’t lead with the football game. Lead with worship. With ancient truths and life-giving community. With a reset of priorities and the encouragement of the gospel that you received at church.
When choosing a sports league, you may have to explain that your family chooses to value your faith even over something as beneficial as team sports. So the teams that travel every Sunday just won’t be a good fit for you and your child. (Jesus never said being a light would be easy).
And honestly, in your closest relationships, being a light for Jesus becomes even more intimate and vulnerable. It’s a complicated challenge to bring the grace of Jesus and the truth of Jesus with the perfect balance that He did. If you land too heavily on being a self-righteous judge, if you come across as pompous and arrogant and superior–you will lose relational credibility and you may lose future opportunities to have meaningful gospel conversations.
However, it’s worse to lean to the other extreme. What if you never point upward to Christ at all? What if you never reference your faith and your relationship with God? What if you never explain why it is that you live by the virtues you embrace and the vices you renounce? What if you never explain that Jesus has called his followers to be holy? What if your people never hear from you that sin is missing the mark and that the consequences are death and separation from God and everything that is good? Well, then you weren’t being a faithful light of Jesus to them at all.
Being a light to your world takes a willingness to look for every opportunity in every human encounter to point to the source of all light. We become people who help others “follow the sunbeam up to the sun.”
This is not the time to shrink back. This is the time to shine. It’s time to make this harvest season, this October, the spiritually brightest one yet.
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts…”
— 2 Corinthians 4:6