For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light…
Ephesians 5:8
When I was a child, my dad, who taught aerospace engineering, would talk to me about “time dilation,” which I still find fascinating these many years later.
I learned that you could start out on a space ship to a distant planet and be away for a only a few years; but when you got home, everyone you knew would be long dead and gone, because time would have slowed down for you in relation to how they were experiencing time on earth. Time, for a moving object – or a moving person – slows down more and more the closer the speed of the object approaches the speed of light.
Star Trek never seemed to me to take this into account in its adventures. But in case you’re a Trekkie, I just learned that the Warp Drive on the spaceship Enterprise somehow creates an artificial time-space bubble that solves the problem.
Back on this earth, Einstein showed us that time is not constant. Time is not an absolute. It is light, the speed of light that is the constant (but even that is constant only in a vacuum). And for a moving object, time theoretically would stop at the speed of light – if it were possible for it to reach the speed of light.
Light, not the speed, but light itself, rather than time, is the constant for us as Christians too, for Christ is our light. Christ is the light that never fails: unchanging, unwavering, undimmed.
What is more, we are called to become light.
In the gospel of John, we hear Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8:12)
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:14, 16)
Being light is not automatic, however. It doesn’t happen just because we call ourselves Christian. If we are light, it is because we are united with Christ, our Light. We are light because we walk in the light of Christ, even as we stumble and fall and let ourselves be raised up again. We are light because we are growing in becoming who Christ is – growing in love, mercy, and compassion; becoming peacemakers; becoming comforters of those who mourn; becoming a healing presence, rather than one of division; taking on the mind and heart of Christ, so that our lives are radiant with the holy Light that dwells within us.
Watch Cybernun’s video illustrating the lyrics of the Russian hymn,
“God, You Are Clothed in Light“