Life In The Son

It is nice to see the sun today.  At times this past winter and early spring I have wondered if we would ever see it again.  I have lived almost my entire life in Oregon and a little rain doesn't bother me but it seems like we have had an excess of cloudy skies and rain this year.  It has interfered with my golf game and with getting my lawn mowed.  I have heard many others express similar sentiments.  I can understand why some of you steal off to Arizona each winter.

This desire for the sun is more significant and has a deeper meaning, however,  than simply wanting to escape the wet and weary winter.  When we seek the sun we are unconsciously trying to connect with the source of life.  When we are cut off from the sun symptoms of decline begin to appear.  Our skin becomes whiter; listlessness, apathy and a weariness of spirit sets in, actually bringing on depression in some cases.  Vitamin D, which comes from the sun, is vital to our health and with very little sun we end up taking supplements.

If you put yourself under the sun you don't have to work or engage in artificial stimulants, or do anything to receive its life giving benefits.  You don't have to command a stone which is lying in the sun to become warm;  it becomes warm quite of itself.  Or, more accurately, from its relationship to the sun.  It's the relationship that does it.

Helmut Thielicke, theologian and pastor who preached in Germany during the second world war, became famous for his sermons on the Lord's Prayer.  He spoke on this theme in one of them:  "when we get away from God we become like someone who is deprived of the sun and is therefore artificially isolated from the element of life which is part of his nature."

Life, vitality and spiritual health do not come by our own power.  It is the relationship that does it.  Thielicke added, "The person who hallows God's name, lets him be his Lord, and surrenders his life to Him, will be drawn quite spontaneously ... into a great healing process and will become a new person.  One cannot become a new person by deciding to become one.  He can become a new person only when he allows himself to be incorporated into this living process of fellowship with God."  Then Thielicke added this simple poem:  

The sun that smiles at me

Is Jesus Christ my Lord;

Its what in heaven I see

That lifts my heart to sing.

As John said, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (1:4).  Jesus is the one who brings me out of my dark house and tells me that the Sun is smiling at me -- who gives me this relationship with the Father that means life!  We come now, in the Lord's Supper, to renew and strengthen the relationship that gives us life.  Here we place ourselves under the Son and He gives the warmth of life.