The Kingdom of Light

"The Kingdom of Light"

Colossians 1:12-14

(We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul -- not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives.  It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in the kingdom of light that he has for us.  God rescued us from the dead-end alleys and the power of darkness.  God has set us up in the kingdom of light in the Son He loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.  Colossians 1:12-14, MSG)

A couple of weeks ago, we passed the summer solstice—the longest day of the year, the first official day of Summer.  The long, hot days of summer have been upon us.  But at the same time, since we have passed the summer solstice, that means the days are gradually getting shorter and shorter.  What that means is, the days will be the same 24 hours, but the amount of sunlight we will see, will be less and less. We are now moving toward the winter solstice, the shortest day of daylight of the year—ever increasing darkness.  Back and forth, between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness.

Another way to look at this is the times in our history, where people have come to our country from their home country—a place of darkness to, hopefully, a place of light.   When the first pilgrims came to this land, they were coming for one main reason.  Freedom.  They were coming to escape oppression.  They were coming so they could worship freely.  They were coming to escape the persecution of those who wouldn’t allow them to express their Christian beliefs in a way they desired.  It was a religious freedom that brought most of the new colonists to this country.  Once they got here, they knew they had found that freedom -- that they had been brought over from a land of oppression to a land of liberty, from a place of darkness to a place of freedom and light.

That’s how Paul described to the Colossian Christians what had happened to them when they came to believe in Christ.  That’s what he told the believers they should be most thankful to God for:  that they had been brought over from the kingdom of darkness and now had become residents in the new kingdom of light.

In the ancient world, a conquering army would take the defeated people, lock-stock-and-barrel to the conquerors land.  The vanquished people would be blended into the conqueror’s culture.  They would gradually lose their identity, becoming members of a new way of life with a new people.  That’s what Paul is saying God did for us through Christ.  God had to conquer us and our old life -- the life of darkness -- and take us, like captives to a new and different life -- life in the kingdom of light.  Some of us may not have been, initially, happy about the change.

For a time, the two ways of life would overlap.  That overlapping time would be the time of our conversion, of our initial coming to belief in Christ as Savior.  We go through a time of disorientation.  To which kingdom do we really belong?  We aren’t sure.  We have feet in both the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.  But conversion, God’s conquering of us, puts us on the road of a long journey into a new place.  We find that our life becomes one of movement toward an ever increasing light.  We begin to see, on the horizon, and then become more and more a part of God’s kingdom of light.  We understand, in a progressively greater way, the will of Christ, our new ruler and King.

Notice that Paul uses the phrases, “kingdom of his dear Son,” and “kingdom of light” as synonyms.  The dear Son is the one “who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.”  These terms help us understand what it means to be people who are now in the kingdom of light.

But I think we’ll understand even better what it means to be residents in the new kingdom of light if we realize what light itself can do.  When I was a pastor up in Nebraska, there was a man in the congregation who had seasonal affective disorder—that condition where the decreasing daylight causes emotional, physical, and psychological problems.  It began to really get to him starting in the Fall, as the days get shorter, and we enjoy less and less light.  He helped me understand just how important light is to life.

Many of our bodily functions, at least a hundred, have daily rhythms.  They go through their work in a routine way, day after day.  They complete a cycle every 24 hours with more precision than the atomic clock in Colorado.  These rhythms are genetically programmed, but it takes more than genes to make them work.  It  takes sunlight.  Light coming in through the eyes gives these rhythms their ability to function.

Sunlight coming into the brain through the eyes is transferred to a little pine cone shaped gland called the pineal.  It’s about the size of a pea.  That gland then kicks off a hormone that gets into our blood stream that allows these bodily functions to go through their genetic routine.

If there were no light coming into the pineal gland, the many rhythmic functions of the body would resemble an orchestra without a conductor, all those bodily functions playing their own tune to their own timing.  It would be chaos.  If light is absent, temporarily disrupted, or markedly reduced, this creates a significant disturbance in our bodily and emotional stability.  All controlled by the sunlight.

When Paul wrote that we have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light, could he have known what he was saying?  Without the light of Christ in our lives, stability is gone.  Emotional and physical well-being has its roots in the kingdom of Christ.  True Christian spirituality has to do with the body and the soul.  The more we are in the light of Christ, the more we will feel secure and in synch with the way we were created to be.

The kingdom of Christ -- the kingdom of light -- has to do with daily rhythms of body and soul that need to be synchronized.  But that can’t happen as long as we are living in the kingdom of darkness.  The kind of God-light that needs to get into our lives, and transform us, can’t happen if we stubbornly remain in darkness.

Can’t you just feel it when your life gets out of synch?  All the daily rhythms that make life feel good, are disrupted.  All our systems are on red alert.  The man I mentioned, from my congregation in Nebraska, would experience severe symptoms during the winter.  Psychologically, he would experience ever increasing depression.  He became lethargic.  He would get illnesses and body aches that were hard to diagnose as to their origin.  His mood would swing from fun-loving to flared temper tantrums.  He would sleep too much, then he wouldn’t be able to sleep for days.  All his systems were more and more out of synch.   And the doctors couldn’t figure it out.

Then, by chance, he read about this seasonal affective disorder.  He changed out all his light bulbs in his home and office with full-spectrum lighting.  Within a week he was showing signs of huge improvement.  Then all the symptoms went away.  It all had to do with the kind of light that he needed, especially in the winter.

Similarly, when we feel all out of synch spiritually, we might need to check how much Christ-light we are letting in through our eyes.  Have we retreated back into the kingdom of darkness?  Are we using an artificial kind of light that really doesn’t have the power to make the kinds of changes in our lives that Christ's light can?

The pineal gland plays a major role in every aspect of human functioning.  Research has shown that this little gland is the regulator of reproductive functioning, growth, body temperature, blood pressure, motor activity, sleep, tumor growth, moods, the immune system, and the very length of our lives.  And without sunlight, that little gland, being unregulated can create dysfunction in one or many of those body and emotional processes; as it did in my friends life.

Playing off of what we know about the pineal gland, I think you can make the jump to understanding how important it is for our wholeness to be a part of the kingdom of light.  To be rescued from the kingdom of darkness.  Notice that little word “rescued.”  Most people don’t just voluntarily walk out of the kingdom of darkness.  It has to be a rescue effort.  God, through Christ, had to covertly invade this world and take us hostage so we could see the reality of the difference between the two kingdoms.  Otherwise, it may have never happened.

I want to briefly comment on another quality of light that I learned as I journeyed with this man and his light deprivation disorder.  Light heals.  Different colors of light have a healing quality to them.  Over 100 years of research have been done on the ability of light to heal and nourish the body.

The body absorbs light, not only through the eyes, but the skin as well.  Our bodies are literally photo-receptors of sunlight.  The full spectrum of light coming in through the skin nourishes and heals our bodies.

Research has shown that different colors of light enhance healing in different kinds of injury or illness.  Has anyone, with a broken bone, undergone light therapy?  Certain colors of light heal breaks faster.  Doctors who work in this field have isolated different sections of the human body that respond positively to different colors of light, or combinations of colors of light.  There are 12 main colors that have been found to have amazing healing and restorative qualities:  red, orange, yellow, lemon yellow, green, turquoise, blue, indigo, violet, purple, magenta, and scarlet.  The colors turquoise and emerald green were found to have the widest range of healing powers.

Isn’t it interesting that, in the book of Revelation, the color most associated with God and the throne of God is emerald green.  To be brought into the kingdom of his dear Son means to be bathed in the healing light of God.  It means to have every part of our body and soul shined upon by the reviving and recreative and healing light of God.

To continue to be in the kingdom of darkness is to go without God’s potent and embracing light that heals us from sin and sets us free from breaks and disruptions that seek to do us harm.

Think of all that light does for us and means to us.  Light enables us to see and understand our world.  To see light and absorb light is literally life.  Light brings freedom.  Light lifts the spirit and increases our hope.  Light has to do with creation, conversion, and healing.  Conversion is new creation.  Conversion is our entrance into the kingdom of light of our God.

What a wonder it is, to be brought by God into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of His dear Son -- which is the only way wholeness of life can be had.  Thank God that you are not in the dark anymore.  Thank God that you have been rescued and brought into the kingdom of light.