God is light (1 John 1:5). We are in darkness, but He wants us to see Him. The whole universe reflects this need for light for everything to exist and for life to grow. In the beginning, He came to restore the waste and darkness of the earth by speaking forth light (Gen. 1:2-3), and He comes to us to save us as light (John 8:12). In that moment of revelation, the Lord Jesus reveals Himself to us as an image, an impression — not with our physical eyes but in our human spirit. We, wretched sinners, can behold the living God. And His shining not only exposes us, but ushers us into the light to have fellowship with Him (1 John 1:3, 7), leading us to see, to confess, and be saved (1 John 1:9). It’s through this shining that we enter into His healing love and begin an eternal journey of declaring and remembering.
Like Peter who wanted to remain with the Lord when He was transfigured on the mountain, we also want to simply stay in this light (Matt. 17:4). But our journey in faith continues in our going back to declare and announce to others what we have beheld in the light (1 John 1:1). Light is eternal, but in our experience it may happen in a flash, in a moment of time. Our beholding may be brief and requires that we put to words what we have seen. Indeed, light is the beginning of our language, and we speak from light. The whole Bible is a testimony of witnesses describing what the Lord revealed to each one. The Lord is seeking this testimony in the universe, and we also have a need to speak forth a testimony of Him.
All of these experiences of the Lord’s light become precious memories to us. And these memories become the anchor in our journey with the Lord, always pointing us back to those moments when He redeemed us and shined on us so that we can have a way to repent, turn, and come back to Him again. And this is how we overcome — when our experience of redemption becomes “the word of [our] testimony,” more precious to us than our soul-lives (Rev. 12:11). To claim the life of a believer requires this beholding and confessing — not repeating someone else’s words but speaking forth a true experience of Him. May we find over time that we are not poor in our experiences of the light but rich like the apostle John so that someday we can meet our Lord face to face and enter into the totality of all these memories in the light.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 8/4/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)