Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky – Philippians 2:14-15

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 6, 2018): Philippians 2

Poet-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that “when it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” One of my laments is that living in our contemporary cities, we so seldom allow it to get dark enough to see the stars. My grandchildren love to run out of my house, on their way home after a day of fun at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and just look up into the sky and see the moon and the stars. To them, every full moon is a supermoon, and every star is special. Yet, the stars that they see are only a fraction of the ones that I remember growing up, and, even then, what I saw was just a fraction of the ones that I would see if I just got out of the city. Light pollution has increased, and it never seems dark enough to really see the stars. And that, I believe, is to our detriment.

Paul encourages the Philippians to become stars. There was no doubt in the Apostle’s mind that the culture was dark enough that the church should be able to shine. But he was also worried. We are not sure if this worry was specifically aimed at the Philippian Church, or if it was a more general concern regarding the faith that was now unfolding all over the known world. Some practices were becoming more and more prevalent that made the church less of something God ordained and more of what was already dominating the culture. And prime among them was the practice of grumbling and arguing. Again, the specifics are unknown, but the result was a collective dulling of the church. The church had begun to fade into the background of the culture; it had become just one more belief system.

I have to admit that I share some of the same concerns about my culture. We sometimes spend too much time arguing about what it is that separates us rather than what it is that we hold in common. Sometimes, even for me, it just seems too easy to grumble and complain, or to argue over minor disagreements in the church, while letting the bigger ones fester. We forget that we serve a Maundy Thursday Jesus who teaches us to love, and when we are through loving, to love some more. The Christian Church has given up on the idea of shining in the darkness of our culture like a star and is often content to be a meteor that is only noticed when it crashes into the earth.

I don’t want to be known for my crash, but rather for the way that I have lived my life. I want to be known as a child of God, even to a generation that does not believe that God exists. I want to shine in the darkness and know that the light that emanates out of me has a source that not even the darkness can overcome. I want to be a star.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Philippians 3