Shining

Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life (Philippians 2:14-16a).

 Dark nights were also as dark as they are now.  Paul’s generation was as “crooked and depraved” as is our own.    People then had the same, ”What’s-in-it-for-me?” attitudes as they do now:  “I’m not going to do any more than I have to.”  “Why should I work?  She isn’t!”  “I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it.  I don’t really care who it hurts.  After all, what I want is the most important consideration here.”  Lust, selfishness, pride, deceit¾no century has had a corner on the commodities of the sinful nature.

 Against such a backdrop, true disciples of Jesus are as evident as stars on the darkest of nights.  The expression of the sinful nature that Paul focused on eradicating in the lives of the Philippians was a complaining, murmuring, argumentative attitude.  This is key.  He called the disciples to do a heart check.  The one writing from a Roman prison displayed no trace of such a negative response.  If anyone might have been excused for complaining, murmuring or arguing, it would have been Paul.  The fact that he did not spoke a powerful message ¾and still does.

When the weather is lousy and we don’t complain; if someone insults us and we don’t insult them in return; when our employer asks us to do a task we don’t enjoy and we don’t mutter under our breath as he walks away; as our teacher gives an assignment and we don’t whine with the others, we shine like stars in a self-centered universe.