Shining Like Stars in the World

“It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”

~Philippians 2:16 (NRSV)

There is a beauty in life that can be seen most days; any day, really. Even in decrying suffering aspects of life we can never quite get our heads around how strangely wonderful life actually is. This is perhaps what we get, from an imminent-death context, looking back.

The innate human urge is to get the most from life.

The Agency To Life

As we boil things down to the basics, we cannot deny an ancient truth. The agency to life is the Word of God—Paul’s “word of life”—in the manner of living that bequeaths us restoration for the day.

At the scantest sign of an approaching hopelessness, a mirage of things vacuously interminable, where life ceases to make sense, plunging the eyes into God’s Word is the agency divesting mind, heart and soul into the presence of the spiritual universe beyond time. From the ancients we draw breath beyond oxygen.

As well for maintenance, reading our Bibles provides so much impetus for daily insight and learning; it is the agency to life.

How might we otherwise shine like stars in the world? We need bearing. We need to sit on a compass of guidance to find where we are and know where we need to get to. We need the fuel of hope, even as we feel strong, to compel us through our day.

Practical Nuances Of The Biblically-Centred Life

Having done our early work, either late at night or in the dawn, having become reminded of our place in the world and of our need for fresh spiritual fuelling, we go out into our worlds.

This is where real prayer must commence: in the going out, staying out and engaging the world, and in coming home. Our behavioural operations are the keys to life. Our performance runs quickly back to our earlier spiritual fuelling. We are revealed as having fuelled well enough or not well enough.

Our key performance test is: have we shone like stars in the world?

Has God’s Word inspired us, whether by strength of hope or soundness of confidence, to take our prospects and our realities into the good results of God’s potential for us?

And whatever is our answer is only the point to this realisation: how might we try in living for God, tomorrow?

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Shining like stars in the world is a Christian imperative and privilege. Our agency is holding fast to the Word of Life. By this we do not run in vain.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.