Sparkle

Matthew 5:16

Contemporary English Version (CEV)

16 Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

In my third year of seminary, I moved into a house with two art majors and another seminarian.  It was an old row house with pocket doors and vintage light fixtures. This house was truly "community" living.  It had been so long since the floors were refinished that in places,you could actually see between the boards to the basement.  When the basement roommate (whom I never actually saw...ever) smoked in his room, our house smelled like cigarettes.  When one of the roommates in the apartment upstairs was going through a breakup, we all knew it because he would play the same sad Damien Rice song again and again. 

My room was a living room that had been divided in half by pocket doors that served as a wall.  My roommate Amanda and I kept the doors open most of the time.  Amanda is like a human firecracker. She is bright, effervescent and makes the world a more beautiful place through the love that she so freely gives to everyone with whom she comes in contact.  I'm pretty sure that she only slept about four hours a day.  When I expressed concern about this fact she told me "Beca, you can sleep when you're dead."    

To give you an idea about Amanda's personality, she told me the true story that one day, when she was around eight years old, she came to her parents in tears.  When asked what was wrong, she said her name was too "normal". Amanda comes from a large family. She has five siblings with names like Rhodes, Gentry, Logan and a mom named Willow. Her dad asked her what she wanted her name to be and she said "Sparkle".  Her dad told her he would be glad to change her name when she was eighteen if she still wanted to change it then, in the meantime he called her sparkle at home from that day onward.  Amanda did not change her name to sparkle, but she brought it to our lives.

Amanda taught me a lot about love. Mainly that you can't wait for people to come to you.  When people say you have to break out of your shell to reach people for Jesus, Amanda had no problem because she had no shell. I did. I had been hurt and I had judgement and walls in my life.  That year I became friends with more beautiful, warm,loving, unchurched people than I ever had in my life.  But it took Amanda modeling a love that knew no strangers to show me how to love like Jesus.

It is not the words of the Gospel alone that will win souls to Christ, it is Christians like Amanda, and you, and me whose lives are a living testimony to the Gospel that will move people to know our Jesus.  The Word of God has power to transform lives, but first, we must sparkle brightly with love in a dark world to show the lost the way to the cross. If we can't be a firecracker, we can at least be the flashlight that points the way.

Prayer:  Thank you Jesus for the people who show us what it means to shine with your love.  Help me to point others to your saving grace by living the Gospel with my whole life. -Amen