This Little Light Of Mine

 

I went outside the other night just after sundown to get something I'd left on the patio. I stood for a moment to look out over the yard and, especially, over my little container garden for this year. Although it had been a warm day, up into the low 80's, June has been a crazy month weather-wise. This after following on the heels of an insane month of May where we saw everything from 90-degree heat to frost warnings on the last two days of the month! Needless to say, my plants are playing catch up. The seeds I planted the last week of May are just now starting to peek out!

As I stood there looking out over the lawn, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and looked but saw nothing at first. Then ... there it was again, a blink of light. A lightening bug. One solitary lightening bug! The first little light of the season!

I think most of us can remember summer nights when we were kids spent trying to catch those little lights and put them in a jar to make a lantern. Even as a child I always thought there was something wrong with that even though all my friends thought it was what we were supposed to do. I kept thinking of those poor, frightened bugs all shut up in those airless jars blinking for their lives. It seemed to me that doing that was not only a mean thing to do to them, but it was keeping them from doing what they had been created to do - light up the darkness and bring some light to the world.

All these years later, after decades of fighting for animal rights and to heal the earth before we lose all the lightening bugs (and the earth itself), I can't help but think that we humans are doing the same thing ourselves. We're shutting our light up instead of using it to light the world and those who live in it. I remember teaching my Sunday School students the song, "This Little Light of Mine," and hoping they'd get the message. Now they are all grown up and I am hoping that they, and all of us, are recognizing that only light can see us through the darkness. 

Let your little light shine. All those little lights together can illuminate the world!

Peace and blessings.