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Topic: light (05/24/04)
TITLE: Windows By Karen Treharne 05/29/04 |
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An old drama entitled WINDOWS has a rather unusual scene. An aged window cleaner is washing and polishing windows in the study of a famous journalist. The journalist has his head down and is idly toying with a pencil in front of a blank piece of paper, trying to receive some inspiration or an idea that he can record. The elderly window cleaner looks over his shoulder and almost as if he happened to be talking to himself, he says, “Dining room windows get dirty,living room windows get dirty, den and kitchen windows get dirty. Dust and all sorts of grease and smoke just congregate there and you can’t see out. They get dull and pale and it’s hard to see clearly what’s on the outside.”
He looks over to see if the journalist is listening, and when he recognizes that he is, he gets down to business and says what he wanted to say in the first place.
“Life’s windows get dirty, with jealousy, prejudices, envy, bitterness, and grudges. They get dirty. And when life’s windows get dirty, people have a tough time seeing the light, and sometimes they can’t see it at all.”
Perhaps we can all relate to this story. Our life’s windows get corroded with our ideas. They get polluted with the vulgarity and the profanity that surrounds us. And before long they can get so obscure and so unclean that we literally cannot see through them.
In scripture we are told that the eye is the light of the body, and what we see with our eyes determines the light or the darkness that is within us. That means that life’s windows can get dirty, or cloudy, or obscure depending on what we‘re viewing. When this happens, what can we do?
Washing them on the outside isn’t enough. We need to clean them on the inside. We need to turn to the life-giving ministry of the Holy Spirit, and allow Him to bring light and life to those of us living in the darkest of circumstances, or hiding behind dirty windows.