"The Light of Life" -2

"For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light." (Psalms 36:9) Light of prosperity takes on several different meanings, but when it come to the prosperity of being a child of the King, the meaning goes to heights that are beyond compare. When we take the time to meditate upon the goodness of God, one thing that remains constant in all that appears, is His love; God's love for us appears through all that He does, even that which might appear as wrath, it is only because He loves us that He does what He does. Take the case of forcing Adam and Eve out of the Garden; He did that so that they would not eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their fallen state; just as He told Adam as part of his curse, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Genesis 3:19) Man was not made to be a fallen creature, he was man in the image of God; yet sin separated man from being that of Light, and made him to be a creature of darkness; something of which has no place in the image of God. Not only are we creatures of the darkness, but as Jesus told Nicodemus, we prefer the darkness because our deeds are evil. Darkness is something associated with death, and in darkness, nothing can be seen or understood for what it is, especially the wickedness of our hearts. As I think back to some of the things I did before I was a Christian, they disgust me now, and they make me ashamed for doing them; things like killing defenseless animals for the fun of it, something that was so utterly evil, yet at the time, because of the evil of my heart, seemed almost normal and not such a big deal. When you look at some of the senseless beating and killings that are taking place in our world today, those that portray such acts do not realize the wickedness of their actions, but it is more of a sport, or some form of entertainment. If you can imagine what it must have been like for those that came to watch Christians being eaten by lions, or those at Nero's party, as Christians burned on stacks to light up the festivities; to most that observed such things, they were almost normal and not such a big deal, only because those Christians had become something of a threat to the darkness that they preferred... "He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears. As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor, and saith, Am not I in sport?" (Proverbs 26:17-19)