This Little Light of
Mine
Dr. Larry Thorson
John 1:6-8; 19-28
6 There was a man sent from
God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify
concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He
himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
19 Now this was John's
testimony when the Jewish leaders in
21 They asked him, "Then
who are you? Are you Elijah?"
He said, "I am not."
"Are you the Prophet?"
He answered, "No."
22 Finally they said, "Who
are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say
about yourself?"
23 John replied in the words of
Isaiah the prophet, "I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness,
'Make straight the way for the Lord.' "
24 Now the Pharisees who had
been sent 25 questioned him, "Why then do you baptize if you
are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?"
28 This all happened at
Today’s New
International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Our song for this third Sunday of Advent is more
traditional than the theme songs for the first two Sundays. We began on the
First Sunday in Advent with “You better watch out, you better not cry; you
better not pout, I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town.” And I
talked about getting ready for Christ’s return. Then last week I began my
message on Isaiah’s promise of comfort for people suffering with depression
because of the season with “I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.”
Today’s song isn’t even a Christmas song. It’s the popular children’s song, “This
little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . .” written sometime around 1920
by Harry Dixon Loes. It was originally
based on Matthew 5:16 where Jesus said "Let your light shine before men, that they may see
your fine works and give glory to your Father who is in the heaven:" But besides being a popular
children’s camp song it also became one of the top ten protest songs during the civil rights era
of the 1950’s. As such it referred to
the power of people standing together to make a greater light that will better
expose the darkness of racism.
Regardless of its use, the song is primarily about
light. That’s what makes it so
appropriate for Advent because Advent is all about light. Think about it. I have Christmas lights on my house. I have a nativity scene on my lawn with a
little spotlight pointing at it. We have
lights on our Christmas tree. We have
extra candles with the Advent wreath. On
Christmas Eve we’ll conclude the service with candle lights. The shepherds followed the star to the baby
in
The writer of the Gospel of John refers to Christ
as the light of the world and uses the word “light” no fewer than twenty‑one
times in referring to Christ. For our
sake today I want to equate light with hope.
Sometimes life is like a long, dark tunnel and you’re not even certain
it has an opening until you see light at
the end of the tunnel. It’s that light that
gives you hope to carry on. That’s what
the light of Christ brings a dark world.
I read a story recently about a guy named Darrel
Dore who was working on an oil rig in the
As he prayed, Darrel felt Christ’s presence there
with him. For twenty-two hours the presence of Christ comforted Darrel, but deep
down Darrel knew that the oxygen supply inside the bubble was slowly giving
out. Soon he could be dead.
Then Darrel saw a tiny star of light shimmering in
the pitch‑black water. Was it real or after twenty-two hours was he
beginning to hallucinate? Darrel squinted his eyes. The light seemed to grow
brighter. He squinted again. He wasn’t hallucinating. The light was real. It
was coming from a helmet of a diver who was coming to rescue him. His long
nightmare was over. He was saved.[1]
Think of darkness as an absence of hope. When John wrote his Gospel the world of his
readers was in darkness. No, the sun
hadn’t stopped shining but their country was collapsing morally and
economically. There was a huge absence
of hope for the future.
Darkness is an absence of hope. But often when your world is at its darkest
that’s when God sends a little light of hope.
It may not be the answers to your prayers yet. It may not even ultimately amount to anything
but it gives you hope for that day.
John the Baptist was that little light of hope for
the people of Jesus’ day. He wasn’t the big light of Christ but he was a sign
that their time of darkness was coming to a close and it was time to get ready. He came to tell the world that Jesus is the
light of the world. That’s the good news for this third Sunday in Advent. The
light that enlightens all humankind has come into the world in the person of
the Christ child.
Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, a
ministry to inmates and their families, tells about a meeting he and several
other Christian leaders once had with the president of
Cevallos
had been involved in the struggle for democracy in
Just when the situation seemed unbearable, the
door to his cell opened, and someone crept into the darkness. The president
heard this person working on something in the opposite corner. Then the figure
crept out, closed the door, and disappeared.
Minutes
later the room suddenly blazed with light. Someone, at the risk perhaps of his
own life, had connected electricity to the broken light fixture. “From that
moment,” explained Cevallos, “my imprisonment had meaning because at least I
could see.”[2]
Anyone who has ever been lost on a dark night knows what a welcome relief light
is.
Luci Swindoll tells about a friend who, along with
six strangers, was caught in a stalled elevator during a power failure. Fear
was quickly turning to panic. But then Luci’s friend remembered that she had a
tiny flashlight in her purse. When she turned it on, the fear in the elevator
dissipated. For forty‑five minutes these strangers sat around the light
and talked, laughed, and even sang. The light came on just when they needed it
the most.[3]
John the Baptist came at probably the darkest
moment when the Jewish world most needed light.
Thousands went out to hear his message of repentance and turned their
lives back to God in preparation for receiving the Christ. He was a small light to help them get
ready. You may that tiny light in
someone’s life this Christmas. Imagine
giving the gift of spiritual light to someone.
Judith Carrick tells of visiting a nursing home in
her community where there was a woman whose mind was as sharp as anyone’s, but
because of her illness, she could no longer walk or speak. This poor woman
communicated mostly by gestures. She and Carrick had become good friends over
the years they had known each other, and, as friends do, Carrick occasionally
would run little errands for the woman, small tasks that she could no longer do
for herself.
On one occasion the elderly woman waved Carrick
into her room with some sense of urgency. There on her bed was a paper napkin
with a picture drawn on it. Looking straight at her visitor, the elderly woman
pointed to that napkin over and over again. It was obvious that this was something
important. Carrick looked closely, and she saw the woman had sketched, as best
she could, what appeared to be a flashlight.
“Is that a flashlight?” Carrick asked. Her
friend’s head nodded up and down, while she pointed first at the picture and
then to herself. Carrick laughed. “You want a flashlight?” The head nodded
again. “Whatever for?” Carrick asked.
The woman could not answer verbally, but in her
own way she made it known that this was a matter of great concern and
importance to her. So Carrick agreed to bring her a flashlight.
The
next time Carrick went to the nursing home she made sure that she had the
flashlight in hand. She walked into the woman’s room, shining the light all
over the walls. A big smile crossed the woman’s face. “Please,” Carrick said,
“tell me what this is all about. Why do you need a flashlight?”
The old woman moved her wheelchair toward the door
and indicated for Carrick to follow. Together they went down the hall to the
nurse’s station, where one of the aides told Carrick that, a few weeks earlier,
during a week of heavy rain and high winds, the power in the nursing home had
gone out for a time. The woman had become frightened, and she wanted the
assurance that if it happened again, she would have that small beam of light to
shine in the darkness and ease her fears.[4]
What a great gift for someone who might otherwise
have to sit in the darkness, the gift of light. In 2001 Mark Bent, went to work
as the general manager of an oil exploration team off the coast of the
While working for Perenco in
They
took him home to a rural village where he noticed that many people had nothing
to light their homes, schools and clinics at night.
With a little research, he discovered that close
to two billion people around the world go without affordable access to light. He worked with researchers, engineers and
manufacturers, at the Department of Energy, several American universities, and
even NASA before finding a factory in China to
produce a durable, cost-effective solar-powered flashlight whose shape was
inspired by his wife’s shampoo bottle.
The light, or sun torch, has a narrow solar panel
on one side that charges the batteries, which can last between 750 and 1,000
nights, and uses the more efficient light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.s, to cast
its light.
The flashlights usually sell for about $19.95 in
American stores, but Bent has established BoGo — a Buy One, Give One — program
on his Web site, BoGoLight.com, where if you buy one flashlight
for $25, he will buy and ship another one to Africa, and donate $1 to one of
the aid groups he works with.[5]
What a great gift to give someone the
gift of light. Light means hope. That’s what God has done for us the gift of
Jesus Christ. He has both revealed our
sins and forgiven them so that we can have real hope of eternal life. But to reject that gift by hanging on to our
own lives and doing our own thing is like opening a present and saying “Oh
that’s nice” and stuffing it back in the box and taking it to the Salvation
Army. If you like the gift of Jesus
Christ then show God with your energy, your finances and with your
schedule. Say “Jesus, I want you to be
my Lord, my master and my savior. I want
you to come into my life or for some of you I want you back in my life.”
This Christmas we might be that tiny little light
in someone’s dark world. If Christ is
living in your heart look for someone who might be alone this Christmas and
invite them to come with you. Maybe it’s
just to come with you to Sunday worship or maybe to come on Christmas Eve at
Dynamic Preaching Sermons, Fourth Quarter
2008, King Duncan, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., 2008, 0-000-0000-20
[1]Rev. Richard J. Fairchild,
http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b‑ad04sm.php.
[2] Ronald W. Nikkel in Fresh Illustrations for
Preaching & Teaching (Baker), from the editors of Leadership.
Cited at www.firstpcavillarica.org/Sermon
LAMPWITHIN.
[3]Dr. Shotwell,
http://acbc.us/sermons/struckbylight.pdf.
[4]www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b‑ch00‑adams.php.