Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. 18 He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created.
James 1:17-18 (NRSVue)
It has been awhile since I updated this blog because I had lost access to log into it. Today, however, I was able to get back in, so here comes another blog post from your occasionally intrepid pastor.
God has given birth to us. Isn’t that an odd thing to think about? Didn’t our mothers give birth to us? The answer is yes, but God has given birth to us again.
When we were first born, whether it was in a hospital, a house, or somewhere else entirely, the first thing we likely saw upon birth with our tiny infant eyes was light. We were, by the process of birth, transferred from darkness into light. We transitioned from seeing nothing to being able to see everything. Though we were too young and too new to the world to be able to process and understand anything we were seeing, we saw light being reflected by objects and we saw the shapes and the textures of the world, and it was light that made such perception possible. It is God who has given us the good gift of life and sight. God, who created the heavenly lights, gives us life again in the new birth.
In the new birth, God the Creator transitions us once again from darkness into light. Before, we were lost. Now, we are found. We were blind, but now we see. It is the life of joy and peace that we sing about in the well-known hymn I am now referencing. God has birthed us into this new life.
Because this new life is new, we might not perceive everything the way we should when we first experience the new birth. We see the light, and the things upon which that light is now shed that we could not see before, but in the beginning we often only see the shapes and the textures, not really understanding this new view God has given us of the world. As we continue to grow in grace, God the Creator of lights illumines more and more of our world, so that we gradually come to see the world from the perspective God had intended for us all along.
May you continue to grow in the love and grace of the God of light, so that God’s light may shine into the darkness through you.
AMEN
First United Methodist Church 