Go and Light your World
A presentation at NWYM sessions 24-25 July 2007
By David Niyonzima
Part II—Wednesday
Tonight I want to draw your attention to the person of Jesus Christ who is the Light and the reason that we have the power to dispel darkness.
I want to talk practically about the Light of Christ. Are we paying attention to the light, to what it can do and how it works? We Friends ought to understand the concept of light more than any other religious denominations because we have called ourselves the “Friends of the Light”.
I want to look back at a prophecy by Isaiah. “The people living in darkness have seen light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2 NIV). Indeed Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled with the coming of Jesus Christ. Isaiah further prophesied that Jesus was to come as a light to the whole world.
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth” (Is.49:6 NIV).
Matthew realized with no question that Jesus was the true Light that Isaiah had predicted 400 years before (Matthew 4:16) and he did not want to miss proclaiming this truth as he narrated the birth of Jesus.
Even as we believe that Jesus came as the light, we have seen that there is darkness everywhere in our world today. George Fox saw this in his day, He had a vision in which he reported this.
“I saw an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love; which flowed over the ocean of darkness” Freiday (1967)
Now Fox was a true believer in Jesus Christ, and yet he saw that the work of the Light was not finished. He did not deny or minimize the reality of the darkness, but neither did he despair because of it. His testimony was that in harmony with the John the Evangelist, that the Light would triumph over the dark. We are a people who believe in doing this work. We do not simply sit and pray waiting for a rescue from the heavens. We believe in getting our hands into the dirt and building the kingdom among us. We believe we have God’s promise to help us in this work. We believe in the kingdom that is come and is still coming, and that we have a part to play in that coming.
My friends, I am here to testify that this powerful truth is practical and working in the darkest places of our world today.
In 1993 I was teaching at the Friends pastoral training school in Kwibuka, Burundi. Troops came to our school one October day, and without warning began shooting. Eight of my eleven students were killed before my own eyes. I ran with bullets flying around me. I first hid myself in a car repair pit, fearful and trembling not knowing what I could do. Eventually I ran to my father’s house and hid in the attic for several long days and nights. I was filled with total desperation and helplessness. But praise be to God, In that dark place God spoke to me, and the light shined in the darkness of my trauma and I began to see that I did not need to be hiding. What I heard was this, “David what are you doing here?” This is just what God spoke to Elijah in the dark cave as he hid from Jezebel. I remembered that God enlightened Elijah and told him that he had a mission to accomplish – a mission to train/enlighten Elisha who was to replace him. In that moment I moved from the darkness and went to the light both physically and spiritually. I came out of hiding and returned to Kwibuka to bury the students. I also went about to our churches encouraging people to return from their hiding places as safety permitted. In the process of gathering my people I met Filbert, the young man who had betrayed us and brought the soldiers to kill us. I saw him and I was given the grace to extend to him my forgiveness. God put a great light in my heart and mind.
But that light in my heart did not stop with hope and forgiveness. I saw that there was a great work to do. I saw that my country needed healing and reconciliation. I started then to dream of the ministry of Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Services (THARS) and I have worked for this dream since that time. It has not been easy. I became a refugee, and then returned to my country and my church where we had to put things back together from almost total loss.
I discovered the cure for the hopeless despair that hides in the dark and is paralyzed with fear. I discovered that I myself had to be transformed before I could work effectively in the cause of the light.
After undergoing our own transformation, we must go and light our world. Again, consider what George Fox told his followers: “And this is the word of the Lord to you all, and a charge to you all in the presence of the living God, be patterns, be examples, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one”. When we talk about bearing light, I think it is the work of transforming our world. This is what we mean by missions. It is probably the reason why NWYM has been active in missionary work in Latin America. Maybe this is why you are sending missionaries in Mexico, Ireland, Morocco and Russia.
Do you remember the boy I told you about last night? The child soldier? Eric, and many others have been beneficiaries of my transformation. We did not simply document his damage; we worked with him for his healing. We sat with him until he was able to break his silence. He told us of his haunting nightmares. His dreams and memories in which he was ambushed at gunpoint a vehicle transporting businessmen to a market. He eventually told us about watching his friend executed for refusing to shoot an elderly relative – a trick the rebels used to initiate their soldiers. He would wake up from the dreams and find himself sweating in his torn blanket on a hard bed. He told us that he woke up many times in the middle of the night with suicidal thoughts. But in the telling of it, and in our listening to it without judgment, he found grace and light. The truth set him free. Our unconditional love for him set him free, and he lives today. Not unmarked, but no longer a captive of the darkness.
Sometimes the arm of Light is very gentle, and brings light to people like Eric by simply being present, being open, and bringing the light into the place where the person sits, and by helping that person to find the light that is within them. We nurture and protect that light until it is strong again.
Sometimes the arm of Light has to become a little more active. Several months ago there was a wonderful march in Bujumbura. Dozens of Burundian lawyers, protesting what they called the “non existent justice in the country” took to the streets of our city with torches, kerosene lamps, and flashlights, wearing their long black judicial robes. They told the journalists that they were in search of justice. They walked down the streets pretending that they were in total darkness looking this way and that, calling out for justice, although it was a sunny bright Buja day. They made a great point before the riot police scattered them. They didn’t wait for the light of justice to come – they went looking for it. Sometimes we must take our lights out into the public places, even if we face the opposition of the army of darkness.
Like the Hebrew children we must follow our pillar of light wherever it leads us. And like the Hebrew children sometimes we have to start in the very place of our despair, our captivity. We must seek to turn our light on the thing that seems most hopeless, that seems like a barren desert. If you follow your light it will take you to places you never dreamed of, but you must follow it.
This is what David was singing about after God delivered him from his enemies when he voiced: “You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord turns my darkness into light” (2 Sam.22:29 NIV).
Sometimes our light brings comfort and usefulness. Light is an indispensable thing in today’s life. It makes a difference and transforms darkness into a comfortable place to be. I am sure in this country you owe much gratitude to Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb on October 22, 1879. I was told he made several attempts before he got the right glowing filament. I can almost hear his excitement for his invention as he proclaimed: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles”.
In Burundi, very many villages still use the fire in the kitchen as their only source of light at night. As a result there are stories ranging from animals, snakes and thieves getting into the bedroom without anyone noticing, to a mother getting food from her cooking pot putting it on the ground because she did not see the plate.
Using our light to simply make lives better, healthier and easier is also God’s work. Fighting poverty is God’s work. It is not God’s will that so many people spend 100% of their precious human energy simply hauling enough water or fuel to survive the day. These people have as many gifts as you or I. There are Thomas Edisons among them. But the darkness of poverty holds them captive. Our considerable light can make the difference.
Bearing Light is an active, deliberate and concrete life style. Friends call it living in the light or simply the “testimony”. I call it faith in action. This life style has to have visible actions that make a difference to those around it, that is, those in the darkness. It is what we must be and do. This is how I understood the passages we have just read. A light is not a light until it is lit. This light is action oriented just like a torch or flashlight. It must be oriented towards darkness to chase it. In 1647, before George Fox saw the “Ocean of light and love” flowing over “the ocean of darkness”, God had first showed him “That the natures of those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men”. Bearing Light is possible when “those which were hurtful… within, in the hearts and minds” are transformed into those that are caring, loving, forgiving and compassionate, as in the children of light. We become the children of light by allowing Jesus to transform us and make us children of light. Paul told the Ephesians: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light!” Ephesians 5:8 (NIV).
This is possible when we have a concern or a burden for those in darkness. We must have a concern to make a difference, to transform darkness into light. “The word concern,” wrote Harvey Gillman in his A Light that is Shining “has a more powerful meaning among Quakers. It refers to a religious compulsion to act in a certain way, based on ’a leading of the Spirit’. Early Quakers left home and family under a concern to preach the truth as they saw it, just as Mary Fisher had a concern to speak to the Sultan or Elizabeth Fry to improve the condition of prisoners in Newgate prison. Similarly one could say that John Woolman had a concern about the possession and selling of slaves and felt compelled to act according to the dictates of the light within him”.
Do you have a concern? Do you have a compulsion to work for peace or justice? Do you care for those of other backgrounds, those of other cultures who are suffering or living in the valley of the shadow of death, of sin, poverty, war and disease? They need your talents, your money, your spiritual gifts, your time, your light.
Jesus challenged his hearers that no sensible person would light a lamp and cover it with a basket. We may have baskets that cover our lights. Those may be good things such as: our wealth, health and our education. We may have our own reasoning that “there is nothing I can do for them”. The baskets we cover our lights could be our excuses that “I do not know their culture or their language. I do not want to create a dependency in them. Oh, it will not make any difference anyway, etc. etc.” But I have found that as the Light transforms me that all my excuses fall away. I have seen my friends from the Northwest, people sitting tonight in this room, come without language, spend their own resources, make cultural mistakes, and then learn and try again to really reach out and connect to my people. I come to you tonight in this effort to connect across boundaries and bring you what light I have. I have found that I have no excuse good enough to keep me from God’s work.
Go and light your world. Start by allowing the transforming power to find your own places of despair and bring them into the light. Then listen to God’s leading as He shows you where you must take your light. It does not matter whether you do this in your own neighborhood, or on the other side of the planet. God wants to work with you as He fulfills His promise to His people when He said: “Your sun will never set again, and your moon will waver no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light and your days of sorrow will end” (Is. 60:20 NIV). I have tested this and found this to be true. Go and light your world.
