The God Colours

God of every blessing, I invite You to shape my soul with Your words and inspire my life through Your works. Teach me to walk in the way of blessing.

Pause and pray

As I finish up this plan on the Beatitudes, I’m challenged by Jesus’ postlude...

Read Matthew 5:14-16

Have I ever met someone luminous? Who lightens up a room when they walk into it? Who seems to radiate love and warmth? I wonder if that is what Jesus is talking about in this passage?

God, I’m aware that I’ve got dark bits in me - parts of me I hide from Your light, and light bits of me that I hide from the world. I’m sorry for hiding. I ask that You would flood me with Your light, and give me the confidence to let it shine for everyone to see. In the quiet, I imagine my soul as a dimly lit room. What happens when You come and turn on the light?

Pause and pray

God, I’m so aware that when the world looks at the church, they see our darkness - our failures, our frailties, and our faults. Lord have mercy. God would You shine Your light on Your church. Would You expose our deeds of darkness. Would You help us to repent, to love the light. Transform us so that the good news would be enfleshed in our lives as individuals and as communities. In the quiet, I imagine my church as a dimly lit building. What happens when You come and turn the light on?

Pause and pray

What is the invitation of the Beatitudes, the way of blessing? To be the light, in the same way that Jesus Himself was and is the light of the world.

In his book, Recovery, Aaron White summarises it this way: ‘This is the purpose of the Beatitudes: not to bring us sobriety, progressive politics, good morals, or full churches, but to guide us toward the recovery of Jesus’s divine image in us and in one another. If we seek this first, everything else that we need will come too.’*

Jesus, I hear Your invitation to recover Your divine image in me and to cultivate it in those around me. I want to shine as a child of light, and shine like a star in the sky as I lay hold of the word of life (Eph 5:8, Phil 2:15,16). Come and fill me with Your light!

Amen.

*White, Aaron. Recovering (Pastoring for Life: Theological Wisdom for Ministering Well) (p. 171). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.