Fireflies

I went to a special church service yesterday. A woman I know has just been ordained as a Priest, and she was giving the sermon at a church I work with for the health and wellness work that I do. There were so many wonderful people there, and the service was lovely – it was lovely to see the new Priest glowing with the Spirit of God. She is a beautiful woman and she gave a beautiful message on Luke 9:51-62, “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent messengers ahead of Him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for Him, but they did not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. When His disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another He said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Her message was asking what it means to follow Jesus, and she challenged us to think of ways that we can do that every day, in our thoughts and words and actions, and she stressed the actions of being kind to others, of loving others, of serving others. It is easy to love people that it is easy to love, but as I listened to her message I thought about the people who it is not easy to love, and how I could do that. The Priest said that it is not something that we can do on our own, but that with God’s help anything is possible. A beautiful message and an important one, something I need to be reminded of every day, and especially now when I am having a big challenge with someone I know.

Before the service I had been speaking with some other wonderful and beautiful women, women with such beautiful spirits – this day was full of them! There were men there too, but today was a day for me to spend with the women, a day to be refreshed by my sisters. After the service I continued to talk to one of the women, and we spent several hours together. During our conversation, she shared some things with me that were confirmations from the Lord, a cool refreshing drink of life giving water at this time when I needed it so much.

Following Jesus is easy when we know Him. He gives so much to us that even when He asks us to forgive and love when we don’t really want to, we do it anyway because we know that He will help us do it and bless us through it. The thing that is hard is the resistance we have in ourselves and the attacks we face because we are following Him. Spirits recognize each other and darkness hates the light. But John tells us in John 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That is the New International Version translation, and there are a few others that have slightly different nuances. The New Living Translation says that the “darkness can never extinguish it,” and the Douay Rheims says, “and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Weymouth New Testament says, “and the darkness has not overpowered it.” The darkness cannot cover over the light, it cannot put it out, it cannot understand it and it cannot overpower it. The light has the ultimate power and it will shine for eternity. It can never be put out.

On my way home, it was just getting to be dusk, and the fireflies were out. I haven’t seen fireflies in a while, and it was such a sweet and lovely pleasure to see them glowing in the semi-dark of the grey evening light. It had been raining just before, and there was a freshness in the air, a cooling after these hot days. As the fireflies glowed and I walked up the hill to my apartment, I thought about the way the light of God comes to us at all times, even in our darkest ones. Sometimes there are days or hours or even weeks or months when we feel like it is so difficult to just keep going, but then the light of God comes glimmering through the darkness, a sweet and lovely glow to help us continue walking forward. As I walked I remembered a lamp I had made once with a shade of recycled glass. I had filled it with a strand of Christmas lights that trailed out of it in a cascade of stars. Someone I loved told me that Native Americans make lamps like that by using fireflies. I don’t know if he was just being poetic, but the image of the firefly lamp came back to me as I watched the individual fireflies lighting up the dusky evening. I think I read somewhere that their light is the way they communicate, but maybe that’s just my own thought of poetry.

Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” My conversation yesterday had started with the word of God in the morning as I read the word He gave me for that day. He started me in Psalm 11 and brought me straight through Psalm 19, each one speaking to my heart and giving me comfort and strength. And then the beautiful service and the beautiful meetings and conversations, and the confirmations, one after another of what He has been speaking to me.

In 1 Kings 19, when Elijah has fled out of fear from Queen Jezebel, the Lord comes to him to speak a word to strengthen him. Elijah says to the Lord, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 19:14) But the Lord tells him in verse 18, “Yet I reserve 7,000 in Israel – all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” Sometimes we can feel so alone. When the enemy is coming at us from every side, when every moment it seems that there is a new attack that is worse than the last. When no matter what we do, we feel punished unfairly, when we can’t seem to find any peace. But the word of God tells us that even at those times, there are at least 7,000 more that He will show us who are just as much in love with Him as we are.

I met a little army for God today, and it made me realize that there are many more who I have not even seen. In 2 Kings, the servant for the prophet Elisha is frightened because of the army of the King of Aram that is surrounding Dothan, where they are staying. He asks Elisha what they can do, and then we read in verses 16-17, “Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

The last words that the woman I met yesterday said to me were as we said good bye were, “Don’t lose your faith, ever.” When we have our faith, even as little as a mustard seed, even as little as the light of a firefly, it can light up the darkness when each firefly meets another and they continue to glow more and more brightly as they communicate with the light that is in them.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan