Will You Turn on the Light for Them?

In a previous blog, I wrote that one of the best reasons to believe in the existence (and goodness) of God is to consider what our world would look like if all people lived God’s way instead of their own way. Think about life in this world if every person obeyed God instead of himself or herself.
 
In this post, I’d like to consider what life on this planet would look like if all of us who follow Jesus were to live in such a way that we shined our lights in a dark world. What if we lived like A.W. Milne, the missionary who went to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific, knowing full well that the headhunters who lived there had martyred every missionary before him. Milne ended up living among them for 35 years, and he loved them. When he died, tribe members buried him in the middle of their village and inscribed this epitaph on his tombstone:
 
When he came there was no light.
When he left there was no darkness.
 
What a world this would be if those words could be spoken about each one of us. How can we make that happen? It’s simple, and difficult: love God and love people. When Jesus was asked, which is the greatest commandment in the law, He replied with this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
 
A.W. Milne inspired the radical change of an entire culture from darkness to light by loving the people he was called to serve. We can do the same if we will live how Jesus told us (and showed us) how to live. We can change this world, and impact the eternities of countless people, if we will demonstrate a pure, selfless, unconditional love, the very type of love that God showed us by giving His one and only Son to die in our place and take on the punishment that we deserved. Is there someone you know who’s living in darkness and needs the light that you can shine by loving them? Will you turn on the light for them?
 
Troy Burns