Last week I was cruising around with my son Bryce, 11. He is such a little academic stud. Since I slept through school, dreaming up new ways to sin, he is a great companion for me. He tells me stories about ancient Greece, famous scientists, and the composition of an atom.
As we were driving he was talking about the distance to the sun and the amount of heat and light it puts out. Of course he, in his usual pattern, made some witty jokes and encouraged me with his science skills.
In the discussion I was hit with the immensity of the light of the sun. We were driving down the road and everything was in the light of the sun, I could not see anything apart from solar illumination.
It was here that I was impacted greatly by the illumination of God. As I talked with Bryce we were confounded by goodness of God through his gracious revelation to us. There is nothing that anyone has ever known or will ever know about God that has not been granted by divine grace in revelation.
Further, the understanding of this revelation, or the illumination of the revelation, is also granted by God. This is good. We would not have come up with him on our own, instead we would have come up with a god that looks just like us!
Indeed it is good for my soul to sit and think that anything I know or understand about God comes from his own sovereign and kind will in making it known. He has granted that we understand! He has illumined the streets of our mind with understanding of his truth.
We sit in the sun and enjoy the radiant heat; we are refreshed by its warmth and tanning ability (some of us are impressed a little quicker as we are pasty irish calvinists). But how much more to sit and to bask in the soul and mind illumination that comes by God’s own will? The gracious privilege to sit and see God through his word and then to savor him is far greater than watching the beautiful sun sink into the ocean. The lasting taste of divine goodness as revealed in the Scripture is delicious.
Let us marvel at God in illumination:
Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law
2 Samuel 22:29 “For You are my lamp, O LORD; And the LORD illumines my darkness.
Let us long for eternal eclipse of the sun:
Revelation 22:5 And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them;
Thank God for his illuminating grace!