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For Vision and Strength
Sunlight
James Parkinson Sunlight is essential to health both physically and spiritually. The light of the sun is essential to human life, both to be able to see what we are doing and where we are going, and for physiological health. The symbolic extension to spiritual health is then easily made. The sun provides most of the light we experience in our lives. Without it, one would not have coal and other fuels to keep warm and from which we generate electricity for artificial lights. To be suddenly without the sun, Earth would cool until we would freeze. The air would become liquid and eventually freeze solid; all life would die. But with the sun, we are kept warm, there is food based on plant, animal, and sea life to eat, and there is light for our eyes to see nearly all that is around us, so we may choose what to use. We may also explore and learn. There is a direct physical benefit of the sun to us. The ultraviolet rays of the sun interact just under our skin to produce vitamin D which is required for the metabolism of calcium and phosphorus. A shortage of vitamin D results in rickets or osteomalacia, a softening of the bones, which in severe cases makes it impossible to stand by one’s own strength. Overexposure to the sun is also dangerous because it results in sunburn, and may in the long term produce skin cancers. Pale skin is more subject to damage just under the skin, where vitamin D is produced, while darker skin requires proportionately more exposure to produce vitamin D.
Spiritual Applications Sun and sunshine are also used symbolically in the Scriptures: “Jehovah God is a sun and a shield: Jehovah will give grace and glory” (Psalm 84:11), and “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The name, Jehovah (YHVH, YaHaVaH, or Yahweh, often printed as LORD or GOD), may reasonably be derived from Jah and havah. Havah means to breathe, while Jah is suggestive of future tense. Thus, the name suggests continued breathing, or eternal life. The divine name appears 6,830 times in the Old Testament. We should focus on the meaning of the name, rather than in speaking it often, as we are advised, “in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7). Jehovah God, like the sun, interacts with us to produce the “vitamin D” character that gives us a strong spiritual framework. Without him, and his son whom he has sent to be the ransom for Adamic sin, and the light of his word in the Bible, we would be unable to stand. Ultimately, the immortal God is our hope of eternal life. Immunities to toxins are developed by slight exposure to them. That is the principle of vaccination. But can one be overexposed to the pure word of God? If we study the Bible to better understand God and his plans and apply what we learn in our daily lives, we will not be overexposed. If we study the Bible as only an intellectual pursuit without diligently endeavoring to apply it, we will suffer from overexposure which leads to sunburn and subsequently spiritual skin cancer. To paraphrase an earlier Christian: The truth, apart from the love of the truth, may itself become an idol.2
The Church as Beneficiary, Then Benefactor However, the church receives the healing of sunshine to join with Christ to bestow it on others, the remainder of the world of mankind: “They that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the sky” (Daniel 12:3, RVIC). Jesus explained this when he said: “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). A promise to the faithful church, the bride of Christ, is that they will bask in the sunshine of God himself. In the thousand-year kingdom of Christ and beyond, the church “hath no need of the sun ... for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). They in turn will provide “sunshine” to the whole world. “The nations shall walk amidst the light thereof: and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it” (Revelation 21:24).
Lessons
for Today We are not to be products of our environment, but whether we like it or not, we are influ- enced by it: “Evil companionships corrupt good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). But “they that feared Jehovah spake one with another; and Jehovah hearkened, and heard” (Malachi 3:16). Let each of us bring sunshine into the lives of those around us by the things we do and say. “Your Father who is in heaven ... maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). This teaches us to be kind even to the ungrateful. Jesus “was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as the light” (Matthew 17:2). On the Mount of Transfiguration the attention of the three was focused on our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, not on the one who depicted the Jewish age of the law covenant (Moses) nor on the one who depicted the Gospel age (Elijah). Nor should attention be so centered even on Jehovah God that Jesus is largely ignored. God directed our attention to his son: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5). Thus, we are to point others not to ourselves (as if to say, “You must join us to be saved”), but to God our Father and to Jesus our ransom and redeemer. Sunshine brightens the day for most people. Let us bring some light into the lives of those with whom we come in contact. As a sign behind the counter in a Christian bookstore put it: “If a customer doesn’t have a smile, give him one of yours.” __________ (1) All quotations are from the American Standard Version (ASV, 1901), except as noted. (2) Russell Siglin of Phoenix in the late 1930s, and who may have paraphrased Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662), Thoughts, Section VIII, The Fundamentals of Christian Religion, # 582: “We make an idol of truth itself; and still less must we love or worship its opposite, namely, falsehood.”
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