8-8-06
I am at Riverstop Café with my third cup of Columbian“half caff.”
I found the picture that is posted below and began to think about candles. Candles start our looking pretty nice; clean edges, colorful, cool shapes. Candles have a purpose though that is concealed within them. They are able to emit light. When the lights go out in your house if you don’t have a flash light then you can use candles. Candles can also be used to create mood lighting for various occasions. The problem is that a candle changes shape when it does what it’s suppose to. A candle begins to round out in some places, drip onto other things, and shrink in size. The life of a candle ends when its purpose runs out. The wick that is placed within the candle must be lit and then it will serve its purpose until the wick is used up.
I liken this to our lives as humans. We start out with soft skin, no bruises, and different shapes and colors. As life goes on we become more banged up and appear less beautiful to our own eyes. I can only imagine a candle looking at itself as it was burning. If it did not realize its purpose then it would be like…”Aw look…that’s sagging now.” or “I can’t control this liquid running down me.” Sound anything like what we experience as we get older?
So we have this purpose…what if we never are never lit? Our bodies still wear away but it is like a candle on a grater. The wick is sliced shorter with every pass and our bodies will continue to wither away. If we are never lit then we will get to the end of our life without ever having served our purpose.
If we have a purpose placed within us then we must recognize it so that we are able to be intentional about our lives. We need to realize that we were created to be light in the darkness. We need to see that our light is not our own but we are given light and we are created to hold light. We are able to have the God of the universe light us up. As we recognize our purpose we will start to see the wearing of our bodies as evidence that we are doing what we were created to do. We will then see the beauty of what is happening.
