Does the moon know it reflects the sun? Does it have to do anything to capture the sun’s light and throw it our way? Does it work at this? No, it only has to stand in the sun’s light. Most of the time, the moon is just being the moon – a pretty dark, depressing place, actually – a dead place, with no color, no life, and yet from earth at night this desolate rock can be transformed into a source of light that has become a universal symbol of romantic love. Moonlight. We fall in love by it. We rock our babies to sleep in it. We take walks in it. We sing to it and write poems endlessly about its mystical ability to show us the world in a different light.
“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, then the veil is taken away. Now, the Lord is the spirit, and wherever the spirit of the Lord is, He gives freedom. And all of us have had that veil removed so that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like Him and reflect His glory even more.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NLT)
Paul says that our spiritual growth – our becoming like Christ – comes from living an honest, open life with our minds and hearts set on following Christ and doing His will.
When we see the moon, it is because it is out away from the earth’s shadow and in the light of the sun. As we come out from our hidden places and pay attention to Him and take His words to heart, we begin to reflect Christ through our lives. This does not happen through human effort; it happens as we focus our lives on God and His purposes for us.
The moon has no light of its own; It puts itself out in full view of the sun and the sun’s light is reflected to us. In the same way, our life and faith lived in full view of others and of God will begin, through the Spirit of God in us, to reflect more and more of Christ’s character.
We are not trying to create this character – we are not even aware of this change happening to us – we just keep looking to Christ. The more we focus our attention of Him, the more like Him we become.
