OBEDIENCE UNTO THE SHADOWS

Walking in the light isn’t always easy, but you can at least see where you are going. You might not be able to see beyond the horizon, but you can generally see in front of where you are walking.

Conversely, walking at night wouldn’t be so bad if you always could be sure what lie ahead. Even if traveling over familiar paths there is always that lingering uncertainty about what might be an obstacle you might encounter.

My reason for wandering the obvious is not to stay on some comfortable ground of thought. It is more a matter of seeing the potential metaphor within the steps. Merely that light or dark our heart must follow a certain flame.

The easy and spiritual textbook response would be to call it the flame of faith. But it is so much more than that. For in reality what flame burns in our heart is the one that truly warms the most.

It is amazing at times to think of how people sometime struggle with why it is so much easier to find obedience in certain situations than in others. And the odd thing is how in situations where you think it would be prevalent it isn’t always that obvious.

For example, in the work place where one is paid for your time it would be presume the reward of pay would inspire a certain level of obedience. Yet, I’ve seen the opposite as a supervisor so often where I work and in general.

Pay just by itself is not always the incentive one would hope. Any more than any other form of incentive that should apply logically always works.

Ultimately then I think our real response of obedience is not from the intangibles or the expected, but from something else. A mental canister where we keep our deepest desires. If we open it as we often do, then we feed the contents into our actions. And nothing reflect the nature of our desires more than how they get expressed as obedience in the times of shadows where nobody is watching.

I find it incredible at times when dealing with those that think God only sees in the light. They never actually state it that way, but their lips reflect the sentiment. It is reflected more than anything by the words that one says to declare what is the fruit of obedience.

What is sad is when people confuse obedience for conformity or something done for purely selfish motives. They love to put their obedience on display in the limelight, but it doesn’t necessarily shine into the shadows. God knows the difference and it is amazing how he can test our heart when we boast of obedience too much. When we fail the test we often find ourselves thinking up excuses to justify our real lack of obedience.

But it will be the times of our obedience that will be revealed in the light of heaven. Hopefully it will be unto a time of rejoice and not from shame.