Ephesians 5:8 - Light is a thing

"...for you were formerly darkness, but now [you are] light in [the] Lord.  As children of light be walking..."

-You were not only living in darkness, you WERE darkness.  Formerly.  But NOW... no longer.

-Darkness is actually not a thing, is it?  Light is a thing.  In fact it is THE thing.  Darkness is not a thing - it is nothing.  It is what you have when you take away... the light.  If you take away everything.  Before there was (and whenever there is not) light, back before there was anything.  In the beginning, God said let there be light, right?

-But before you came to be in Jesus (assuming you are in Jesus), you were nothing.  You had no Light, and you were basically as good as nothing, dust in the wind, so much ashes and dirt.  Fraught with potential, but in the dark - ignorant.  Because there was no true knowledge of God in your heart.  And we choke on that truth, don’t we?  We see so much goodness and wisdom and creativity and yes, potential in people, but it is all only potential until the Light is turned on in their hearts and thru their lives.  Therein lies the harsh reality which Paul has been emphasizing throughout this letter.  Apart from Christ we were enemies, we were children of wrath, destined for the icy cold outer darkness (or that lake of fire), eternal existence-apart-from-God.  The life lived with God cast out will get exactly what it wants.  Payback time will be a proverbial female dog, but it will also be exactly what (I thought) I wanted.  (And sadly, many of God’s people will be more distrurbed about employing that 5-letter b-word than they are about the plight of their neighbor’s soul.)

-But now, you are Light!  Somebody turned on the switch!  The people who were sitting in darkness saw a Great Light (Matthew 4.16, Isaiah 9.2)!  They were living there, walking and stumbling around (cuz that’s what you do in the dark), stubbing their toes and banging their heads and generally aimless and hopeless.  No flashlight, no smartphone app.  No bic to flic.  Not even a match.  But now... not only did Someone turn on the light, not only did you see the Light - you ARE light, Paul says.  You ARE light.  It’s not just that the Light is on in my heart and I see, but I am now a beacon for others, a lighthouse in the night pointing the way to Safe Harbor amidst the pitch-black rocky stormy seas of life, to give my neighbors and the nations a glimpse of the truth about God in Christ, to help guide them out of that same darkness to the foot of the Cross and to Jesus.  Walking as a child of the Light means that I am going to shine this little light of mine (of His!) everywhere I go.  "Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine..."