Look to the Light
I was well into adulthood before truly noticing how the sun moves across the sky through the different seasons. Living on a heavily wooded street allows me to notice more fully the way the sun dances with bare branches in the winter months to old, fully-leaved oak trees in spring and summer.
Twice each year – on May 7th and again on August 10th – the sun’s rays break through the trees in just such a way that they cast a spotlight on the mailbox across the street from my house.
Every time it happens, I feel the same tug of curiosity. I want to run across the street and open that mailbox. In that light, it seems as though it might contain the answer to life’s most pressing questions.
Don’t you sometimes wish guidance would arrive like that? Accompanied by a defined ray of sunshine – or at the very least, a clearly amplified voice spelling out the next faithful step?
Instead, most of us are left with the quiet work of discernment.
Making decisions can be difficult – large decisions or small ones. We gather data. We weigh pros and cons. We listen to advice. We pray. We pay attention to the movements within us: consolation or resistance, peace, or unease. And even after a decision is made, we may revisit it in our minds, wondering if we chose correctly.
Yet Scripture reminds us that “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). Notice: a lamp to my feet. Not a stadium floodlight illuminating the next ten years. Just enough light for the next step.
Perhaps the mailbox across the street is a reminder that God’s guidance is often more subtle than spectacle. The light does not tell me what is inside. It simply draws my attention. It invites me to notice.
After a decision is made, there is wisdom in looking back with gratitude rather than anxiety. What relationships unfolded because of that choice? What growth occurred? How has God met you there? Even our imperfect decisions can become places of grace because God works within them.
And here is a quiet mercy: another choice always presents itself. We are not trapped by a single moment. The Spirit continues to move, to nudge, to illumine from within. Sometimes that internal ray of light is simply a holy restlessness – a deep stirring that will not let us settle for less than what is life-giving and true.
May 7th is coming soon. If it’s a sunny day, the sun will once again spotlight the mailbox across the street. But I do not have to wait for May 7th to seek the light. I can choose attentiveness today. I can pause today. I can ask for wisdom today.
The light we long for is not limited to two mornings a year. It is available in prayer, in scripture, in wise counsel, in quiet reflection. It is present in the steady assurance that God is not hiding direction from us, but patiently walking with us.
Before May 7th arrives, I will remember to look for the light. Perhaps that is the real invitation – not to wait for a beam to break through the trees and land on a mailbox, but to live as though the Light is already shining within.