You are the light of the world!

Whether shining through a prism revealing rainbow hues, dancing off blue waters, glistening through leaves, or streaming through a window, light blesses! It hints at that infinite individualized illumination of goodness always shining as the brightness of God’s own glory. Christ Jesus manifested this holy light and identified all his followers as “the light of the world” (see Matthew 5:14).

With the appearing of Christ Jesus, a new way of looking at everything was shining on the horizon, a view with boundless possibilities. Jesus made plain the reality of being; he was at one with his Father and taught all the facts as God, Truth, knows them to be. The Christ he represented, or the “divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332), illuminates our unity with God, revealing our true spiritual nature as reflecting God’s light.

Wherever Jesus was sharing the Christ message, whether at the seashore, the hillside, the marketplace, the synagogue, there was the warm glow of healing. Right in the presence of often-skeptical scholars and Pharisees, Jesus was willing to let his light shine to be a public witness to God’s impartial and powerful love for all.

The child of God is steadfast in shining forth the nature of Truth.

This activity of the Christ shone in the darkest places of fear, pain, disease, and lack, shifting human thought to behold the supreme law of God, active and expressed as health, abundance, harmony, wisdom. Jesus revealed the kingdom of heaven as within each of God’s children. This kingdom of heaven provides everything needed for all to flourish, to be well, to be infinitely productive and happy, and it is right here!

To the darkness of fear Jesus said, “Be not afraid.” He shared the message that we are perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. Since our perfect selfhood is sourced in God, no age, disease, or misfortune can take it away. In the face of the shadow of death, Jesus revealed the brilliance of God’s law of immortality, a force sustaining our expression of inexhaustible good. Our heritage is complete, our health secure, our destiny filled with infinite purpose, and our nature clothed in goodness. The power of spiritual light releases, uplifts, inspires, redeems, and liberates humanity even now.

The true light of Christ shines right through adversity and can never be defeated. Nothing—not the severest circumstances, not dire predictions, not others’ opinions, not even our own doubts and fears—can ever snuff out the Christ, any more than all the apparent darkness in the world can extinguish the light of one candle.

Our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, called himself the light of the world, yet he emphasized that those who followed his glorious example would also be filled with the enlightened message of the Christ and carry it forward (see Matthew 5:14–16). It’s interesting that the Greek verb meaning “to make known one’s thoughts” is related to the Greek noun for light. Light is a state of having enlightened thoughts that are shared and made known. Christ Jesus saw every follower as having the consciousness of Christ and told them to share it and make known the message that reveals the reality of being.

Someone may be asking, “How could we possibly be the light of the whole world?” But, isn’t it wonderful that we are not responsible for making the light, for tinkering with its scope, clarity, or continuity? God alone is the Maker. Like the moon positioned in the sky to reflect the sun in the universe, we as children of God reflect the Christly light that sets hearts ablaze with the divine Love that heals. As children of God, we are poised to actively express Christlike thinking, including loving God and our neighbor and rejoicing in everyone’s sinless, perfect being and immortality.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, “Man is the idea of Spirit; he reflects the beatific presence, illuming the universe with light” (p. 266). Yes, your spiritual being illuminates the universe! So there is no way your light can be hidden under a bushel or diminished by reticence to reflect the full glory of that beatific presence.

It’s a glorious privilege to brighten the path of those who are groping in the darkness of mortal beliefs and yearning for freedom and peace. Our spiritual light sparkles when our love of God and our neighbor directs us. Jesus commanded all his followers to reflect the love of God by freely sharing the message of the kingdom of heaven at hand, which heals the sick and sinning, purifies and saves, and raises the dead. Where there is Christly light, there is healing. Healing is revealing what is already present, the perfect man of God’s creating, here and now. Healing is evidence of God showing forth His love.

Whatever someone’s apparent trouble, we can rightly see it as a suggested dark image of mortal thought. In Science and Health we read, “Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed joints, are waking dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which flee before the light of Truth” (p. 418). The healing remedy, then, when we are called upon to help others through prayer, is to affirm the true, Christly message that as a child of God, a child of light, the one we are helping is innocent, unable even to entertain incorrect thinking which could cause suffering.

The child of God reflects divine Mind and, as such, manifests health and harmony. The child of God is steadfast in shining forth the nature of Truth. And this is provable. Jesus said the light must shine in such a way that those who perceive it will glorify God.

After returning home from taking Christian Science class instruction, a man I knew was radiant with the message of the Christ and the Holy Ghost. A friend asked where he had been, and the man told him about the class and how it taught him to heal as Jesus did. The friend asked him if he would heal the blindness in one of his eyes. Letting his light shine to glorify God, the man said he would pray. He shared a few spiritual ideas, but then they both were prayerfully silent. A great sense of the power of divine Love welled up in the man and he humbly, silently acknowledged that the kingdom of God was here and now with his friend. After ten minutes, his friend shouted that he had caught a glimpse of Truth and could see very clearly. He was completely healed!

Whether you are in a store, at work, on the road, or climbing a mountain, you can truly be a light in the world.

Whether you are in a store, at work, on the road, or climbing a mountain, you can truly be a light in the world. With an outpouring of spiritual truth and understanding, we can shine with such brilliance that those who are searching or suffering in the darkness may find their way to liberation. In reflecting God, we are seeing that everyone is inherently a child of light.

Mrs. Eddy clearly wrote of our task: “A Christian Scientist occupies the place at this period of which Jesus spoke to his disciples, when he said: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ ‘Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.’ Let us watch, work, and pray that this salt lose not its saltness, and that this light be not hid, but radiate and glow into noontide glory” (Science and Health, p. 367). We have the opportunity to embrace our holy position as “the light of the world,” full of joy, gratitude, and love for God and man—and to recognize man’s forever Godlikeness.

As individual points of light shining across the globe, together we are “like the stars, com[ing] out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God” (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 340), bringing healing and freedom and peace.

Let your light so shine!