UKRAINE | L’viv
I recently decided to go through another “read through the Bible in a year” program. My lackadasical reading choices everyday were making my quiet times just as uninspiring and therefore I realized that I needed a tad more structure. So the reading plan takes from four different parts of the Bible, which has been fun to compare things from the Old and New Testaments.
As I was reading yesterday I came across the story from Exodus about Moses coming down from the mountain.
“When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because be had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone…”
Wow! Incredible! Imagine being so deep in the presence of God that your face glows, or more so SHINES. This story became even more real, ironically, after watching a movie called Stardust. After a long ministry day, Bethany and I took advantage of the huge projector and decided to watch a fantasy movie to somewhat escape from the world. In the movie, a girl, that looked like Gwenith Paltrow but wasn’t, is a star that fell from the sky. As a star, her job is to shine, but she only shines when she is around this human that she falls in love with. The more she is with him and the closer that he is to her, the brighter she shines.
As I was reading those verses in Exodus I couldn’t get the image of her face out of my mind and how brightly it shone, I can only imagine that Moses’s face would have shone just as brightly as hers did. I desire this same quality. I want my face to shine the closer I get to God and the more I am in his presence. I hope when people look at me, they don’t see me but see the light is shining off of me.
At the end of Stardust, she grabs her love and holds him tightly and as she squeezes him her light gets so bright it is blinding and is able to kill the “bad guy” with the intensity of the light. WOW, do you see the imagery here? The more time we spend with God and the closer we get with him the brighter our light shines and this same light is able to pierce the darkness or kill the “bad guy.” No works really needed, just being in His presence.
I pray that I can grow deeper with God, so that my life can shine to bring light to the world but also to pierce the darkness.
Pray that in these last few weeks of the race, I am able to dig deep with my Savior and let my light shine for Him who gave me life!
