LIGHT WITHIN--RETURNING TO THE CENTER

Quakers tend to talk, fairly often, of the Light within.  Such a one was Thomas Kelly, a college professor at Haverford College, and a man that died ten years before I was born.  But he had some things to say, to think about, to ponder upon, to meditate upon.  Today, while reading from Kelly in Richard J. Foster's, Devotional Classics, I was challenged again to think, ponder, meditate and return to the Divine Center, the Light within, by Kelly's comments.

John 6:32-35  "Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."  (NIV) 


Here are some of the comments by Kelly that caused me to ponder today:

"The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging peculiarly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief.  It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian souls and Christian groups.

Practice comes first in religion, not theory or dogma.  And Christian practice is not exhausted in outward deeds.  They are the fruits, not the roots.  A practicing Christian must above all be one who practices the perpetual return of the soul into the inner sanctuary, who brings the world in its Light and rejudges it, who brings the Light into the world with all its turmoil and its fitfulness and
re-creates it.

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once.  One one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.

Between these two levels is fruitful interplay, but ever the accent must be upon the deeper level, where the soul dwells in the presence of the Holy One, forever bringing all affairs of the first level down into the Light, holding them there in the Presence, reseeing them in a new and more overturning way and responding to them in spontaneous, incisive, and simple ways of love and faith."

(Excerpts from Thomas Kelley, A Testament of Devotion, as quoted in Foster, Devotional Classics, pp. 206-7)

For the believer in Christ, Jesus is to be the Center of life, around which everything else revolves.  Everything in life is to be seen and evaluated in light of Him, His purposes, His ways, His morality.  In order to know what Jesus thinks, expects, purposes, one must continue to return to Him again and again, for "light" and "spiritual bread and drink." 

The Center, Jesus, should make a difference in one's personal life, but also how one relates to the world and other situations and people within it.  We should be part of God's "recreating" it all.

I see in Kelley's statements the idea of what an Old Testament prophet was to do.  He was to bring people to God and God to people.  He was to act as go-between, mid-wife, and mediator between God and others.

But without the attention to the Center, the Bread of Life, the Light Within, there is the tendency to lose ones' way, to get sidetracked to lesser purposes and lesser things.  There is the tendency to "create things in my image" rather than join in recreating them in His image.

And always, personally, (and corporately as well), we need to return to the Light Within, to be uplifted and encouraged as we return also to worship and praise and sing of His goodness.  This reorients life to life as God intended.