Furnishing the Mind and Heart with Light

“A book is a channel for the flow of ideas between one mind and another.”

— J. OSWALD SANDERS

The life and death of us is ideas. They indwell and swell our imaginations or they intrude and smash our hope. And if we cannot conjure ideas ourselves, best we borrow inspiration from another. All inspiration is borrowed. We think we own it, but only God can. From God come all original thought, wisdom, and structure of being.

“Idea” is simply a structure of being—it ‘is’ and therefore it is in-being.

Now, a book—like a recording or a lecture—is merely the vehicle for the transference of information, from one to another. Our whole world subsists not on material sustenance, but on spiritual victuals (remember the Temptation of Jesus [Matthew 4:4]—“Humanity does not subsist on food alone, but on the very written Word of the Lord”).

Going to Inspired Knowledge

Knowledge is everywhere but it’s not all useful for building us or others up.

We need ‘inspired’ knowledge, as in the sort of spiritual knowledge that came through from the Prophets of God. The Bible is the source of all this wisdom, but it’s not the only place we can find it. There is a plethora of inspired writings. Over the centuries entire libraries have been written on every subject that God has created through his inimitable wisdom.

Our task is to go there. The project of our devotional lives is to sink into the waters of inspiration and allow God, through his Spirit, and our conscious and unconscious cognitive processes, to furnish our entire beings with light.

Light enough to purge the darkness that infiltrates our souls is simply that: Light.

Our invitations to Light are the knowledge of God.

Will we go there regularly enough to allow renewal to flood our being? Can we delay our warrantable will sufficiently to allow God’s Spirit to weigh on us in Light?

If we go to his Word, or to other inspired sources of information, we are fortified against evil, because where the Light consumes the darkness cannot remain.

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Many, if not all, of us struggle with a spiritual warfare: the battle within the mind and heart between flesh and Spirit—between choosing God and going the enemy’s way.

The key to winning the battles and, therefore, advancing upon the war is furnishing our minds and hearts with light to expunge the darkness. We read to edify and be lifted up. We pray in silent reflection, in thankfulness for the basic things. Consider the light and the darkness fades.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.