Aglow with the Spirit: Shining God's Love in Our Own Unique Way

A Letter Still Speaking After 2,000 Years

The Apostle Paul wrote his longest letter to the church in Rome, and whether he ever expected we would be reading it nearly 2,000 years later, we have a lot to learn from it.

Paul reminds the people in the Roman church, way back sometime in the middle of the first century, to love sincerely, be eager to do good, be patient and hopeful during tough times, and keep praying. He calls them to care for others both when they are happy and when they are sad. He urges them to be friends with people — not because of their popular reputation or the cool stuff they have, but because God loves us humans even when we are totally unnoticed or unpopular.

The One Thing That Powers All the Rest

But I missed one of the things on the list, because it's the one that helps us to do all the rest. Paul tells the Romans to be aglow with the Spirit.

It sounds beautiful, but what might it look like?

A Lamp in My Lounge Room

Here's something that might help us imagine it. I have a lamp in my lounge room at home. The unit must be plugged in at a power point and turned on with a small switch so that all the lamps come on. They all have the same small globes, but each one shines out a unique picture from very different parts of the world.

Each one comes from the same source of electricity, and the globes are made of the same sort of material, but the way they light up and give delight is unique to each one.

This helps me understand what it is like to be aglow with the Spirit. We all have the same power source in the love of God in Christ, which comes to us in the Holy Spirit. But we each shine our light — our little globe — through who we are and where we are in life.

Just like in the lamps, we see pelicans, villages, tropical islands. And we will each glow with the Spirit and show the love and light of Christ as we are.

Shining Wherever We Are

Sometimes the love will shine close to home among family or church friends. Other times, we can take the light into our neighborhoods or even further away.

Paul asks us to shine with the Holy Spirit and also to be at peace with others as well as we can. A lot is beyond our control, but wherever we are, whoever we are with, whatever we are doing, however small or large our globe is, Paul reminds us that we can always shine with God's love and light.