Radiance

"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him."

That's taken from Exodus 34, verses 29 & 30. Lately I've been thinking about blindness and radiance, and now I'd like to share those thoughts with you. If you don't know what's happening in the above verses, well here's the scoop:

Moses and all the Israelites are camped out at the base of Mount Sinai. God calls Moses to the top of the mountain for a little chat, but when Moses comes down, he looks totally different. He has spent so much time with God, his face literally glows! Aaron and the other Israelites can hardly stand to look at him, so Moses puts a veil on his face when he delivers God's messages to His chosen people.

That brightness, radiance--hold that thought.

I've been thinking about this subject for quite some time now. The idea actually first popped into my head when I was at work! As most of you probably know, I work part time at the local university's cafeteria. One of my jobs there is to clean the gigantic dining hall. I'll wipe the tables, push in the chairs, and vacuum the floor. In short, make sure that the place looks all nice and neat for the next group of people to come through and mess it up! ;)

One of the things that one will immediately notice about the dining hall is the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that line almost all of the walls. Really, you can see quite a bit of the campus through them! Another thing that I should note is that the dining hall is located on the third floor. There's two more floors until it, and out to the two sides of the dining hall there are two-story wings as well. So looking through the dining hall windows you can not only see the campus, but also the roofs of both of the wings.

Lately one of the wings has been going under some major renovation. For what, don't ask me! All I know is that a crew of guys has totally ripped apart the inside of the wing, and transformed the roof as well. The end result of all of this is that the roof is insanely more bright white than it used to be! Honestly, when I look at it, I am temporarily blinded. Just a short glimpse of that bright, white radiance so radically changes my vision that it takes a few second for me to look away and get re-accustomed to the relative darkness of the dining hall.

Remember that brightness, radiance that Moses had? I've been thinking about that. What if we spent enough time with God, so much time that other people would notice? I can't begin to tell you of the difference between that wing's new bright white roof and other buildings. The sun shines down so brightly on it that you can't help but notice how well it radiates the sunlight. So let's apply this to our own lives. How well do we radiate God's Sonlight? Not well enough? I must admit, that while I try, I think that I'm a little dirtier than I wish. Let's pray to God this week that He will cleanse us, so we can radiate Him even better to those around us.