Let the lower lights be burning
10:11 PM
To help sailors find a way safely to shore, a lighthouse is placed at the head of the harbor so that even amidst darkness or fog a ship can see the light emanating from atop the tower and know clearly which way to sail for home. However, sailing a boat from a wide ocean into a narrow harbor, often fraught with shallow embankments and reefs, can be treacherous and, if not navigated correctly, deadly. So the wise harbor-master places a series of lower lights along the shore, the harbor, or sometimes even in the water itself to mark the surest path to safety.
Christian evangelist Dwight L. Moody once preached a sermon he preached recounting a parable of a particular harbor with a working lighthouse but wherein the lower lights had gone out. A ship entering the harbor, noticing the lighthouse but unguided by lower lights, tried in vain to reach the shore. As Moody taught, "[W]ith a strong hand and a brave heart, the old pilot turned the wheel. But alas, in the darkness he missed the channel, and with a crash upon the rocks the boat was shivered, and many a life lost in a watery grave." It was this sermon, and the tragedy of lower lights gone out, that inspired Philip Paul Bliss to write the hymn "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning" (Brightly Beams our Father's Mercy). Bliss's lyrics provide both hope for the weary or the lost and direction to anyone who wants to help:
I am beginning this blog because I believe that God has given the world a Light, a Savior, set atop a lighthouse, who shines and guides and fills and warms. Unlike the ill-fated captain, along our shore stand, already, hundreds of thousands of lower lights, both those speaking from the past through scripture and those surrounding us today. Thus, someone lost at sea can see the Light and know where it needs to go and then see these lower lights and know how it needs to get there. I believe in the power atop the lighthouse and the honesty and integrity of the lower lights. I want to do what I can, in my own small way, to stand along the shore and reflect any of that light out to anyone who may be tossed on the waves. At the end of his sermon, Moody taught, "Brethren, the Master will take care of the great light-house: let us keep the lower lights burning!"
So much commentary on the internet today consists of sarcastic, faithless, or downright negative perspectives of the world and, especially, religion. It seems that the prevailing belief is that to be critical and analytical one must criticize and attack. This blog should provide readers with uplifting, sometimes new, and always edifying commentary, study, and questions that satisfy the demands of analysis and critical thinking but which provide a discussion that is more fair and faithful than is often available. We won't shy away from troubling topics or questions of doubt, and of course each reader is allowed space to think, feel, apply, and even comment as he or she chooses. For those who choose to believe, or at least for those who are open to such a choice, this blog should be a haven wherein one can rise above the waves and from which one can look at the world through a window less clouded by disagreeableness and dissatisfaction and more clear to the actuality of the bright sunrise brimming over the horizon.
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