A Show

It had been a good day.  One full of activity and a couple of tasks that had actually been completed not just started!  The day was done, the sun long gone and it was time to get some sleep so there would be energy for tomorrow.

Evenings can be a bit tricky for a widow.  After two years a new routine has been established but things can still seem rather empty. Sometimes you hear voices from the past – things that were common place for bedtime routine.  But the voices are only in your memory and there isn’t really any need to respond to them.  Sometimes you smile at the memories they bring and other times unbidden tears slide down your cheeks.  Every night is an assignment in adjusting, especially when you lie down next to an empty pillow.

This night, as is pretty commonplace, I lingered at my bedroom window to look at the night sky.  There is something absolutely beautiful about the stars and the blackness of night and whether I look at it from my deck or my window, I am always awed by what I see, and don’t see, there.  But this night held a surprise beauty all it’s own.

As I looked away from the sky I gazed out over the field across from our house and saw hundreds of tiny flashing lights.  Hundreds of them.  In my front yard as well as the field, there were lightening bugs putting on ‘the Ritz’ just for me.  It was amazing!  They were just flitting all over the place while their little tails flashed and created a show they were totally unaware of.  Naturally, I recalled those times as a child when I and my neighborhood friends had grabbed glass jars and caught the little bugs just to watch them for a while before letting them rejoin their pals in the free air.  I enjoyed teaching my children about catching lightening bugs and remember hearing the fun in their voices as they called out “caught one”!  But this night I was almost breathless at the beauty of seeing hundreds of them all at once from my second floor window.

I felt the whisper of God say to my heart that’s how He feels when each of His children is simply busy about life just being themselves.  When we are ‘flitting about flashing our lights’ it’s a show for Him, a beautiful sight.  The firefly doesn’t care that its light is not powerful or bright or will only be seen by a few.  That little insect isn’t pouting that it’s not a butterfly everyone will admire.  I doubt if the ones in my yard were negotiating for a warmer climate or more beautiful location in which to work.  They were simply busy about their business and in the process I was treated to a beautiful sight.

Whether we know it or not we can bring pleasure to others – and to God – right where we are.  We don’t have to get better or move faster or have more to offer before we can make a difference.  We simply need to be ‘flitting about flashing our lights’ realizing that it’s God that makes the beauty out of what we offer.

So, on this particular night one widow went to bed offering thanks for a beautiful ‘nightcap’, compliments of her Creator.  I can almost hear the conversation that would have taken place if Eric had viewed that with me….!

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—

your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—

and place it before God as an offering.

Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it

without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.

You’ll be changed from the inside out.

Readily recognize what he wants from you,

and quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity,

God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1 & 2  (The Message)