As darkness looms and hope seems lost; we have a powerful opportunity to be unified as the light of Jesus Christ.
America’s most influential Latino evangelical leader Rev. Samuel Rodriguez encourages us to come together as the body of Christ and be the light.
From the beginning of time, God spoke light into existence. As Christians, we are born to absorb and then reflect God’s light to the world. One of the purest of lights in the world, scientifically proven, is called white light. Rev. Rodriguez elaborates,
“Out of science, white light is actually all of the colors of the rainbow coming together at once.”
Similar to the combination of lights that come together to create this white light, Rev. Rodriguez challenges the multi-ethic body of Christ to create a powerful movement and be the purest of lights in the Kingdom of God.
“What would happen if the black church, the white church, the yellow church and the brown church, if all of these different segments of the Church divided by ethnicity, would come together under the canopy of the grace-filled work of Christ? We would see the purest of light.”
Instead of fragmenting ourselves apart, we are called to be unified in the body of Christ. Rev. Rodriguez points us towards Jesus’ desire for unity in John 17:21,
“Jesus was praying to the Father, ‘Let them be one as you and I are one.’”
“When we come together we form the purest, most powerful form of light which is white light, but it requires all of us coming together. Unity will produce the most powerful form of light in the universe.”
We live in a world that is constantly trying to dim our light. Rev. Rodriguez shares an example of light pollution,
“There was a time in Southern California, where you would wake up in the morning and the amount of smog; I mean, you could see the sun was up, but boy. It was obstructed by the overshadowing, perpetual cloud of smog created by the amount of traffic.”
Rev. Rodriguez says that we need to be mindful of these truths;
• We are what we tolerate.
• There is no such thing as comfortable Christianity.
• Complacency is tomorrow’s captivity.
“There are things in our atmosphere that we tolerate that we should be addressing. A Biblical term that Jesus would use, we should be repealed or repudiating; pushing back on issues, subjects, thoughts, constructs, ideas and relationships, but instead we’re tolerating.”
We need to push back the darkness, so that we can shine the brightest, purest form of God’s light.
“At times it requires biblical, Christ-filled, loving confrontation in order to address the toxins polluting our atmosphere.”
