Thursday, August 20, 2009

Lightnin’ Bug


When I was a kid there seemed to be a lot more of everything around. The distance from Ft Worth to my home town Joshua, was much greater back then. Somehow the expanse has disappeared and I wonder about that.


Under an increasing amount of grey hairs my head tries to wrap itself around the recollection of very long summers. Is it just me or does it seem like time has some how accelerated? The 2nd season has jumped from a school zone to the autobahn and I wonder where the summers have gone to. Maybe that’s just me but other things have disappeared which can not be denied.


A very young Texan might argue that I don’t know a thing about Halo 3, Skype or iphone applications but sadly I could point out they don’t know about red ant mounds, horny toads, tarantulas and Jackrabbits. Those things were everywhere when I was a kid.


They left town sometime in the eighties just about the time fire ants and AMDRO came to the neighborhood. One thing which has nearly disappeared that I thought would never go away, was until recently a summertime staple of every north Texan’s summer. City kids and northerners called them fire flies but we called them Lightnin’ Bugs.


When I was little, my cousins and I would catch hundreds at my Grand Parents house and put them all in a single Mason jar. As the night got darker our jar would get brighter. The summertime fields of my childhood were somehow filled with the bio-luminescent glow of something a lot of kids around here have never seen at all. Too many lights outside mean Lightnin’ bug males fail to attract females and they just can’t reproduce. Before long the population dwindles and people think you are crazy when you try to explain what other wise used to be commonly known.


We as Christians are a lot like Lightnin’ bugs I think. When we fail to let our lights shine people can’t relate to what we are talking about and numbers begin to decline. I actually wish there was a lot less talking and lot more shining going on among us believers. The active demonstration of what we believe is so important as our culture declines and our nation moves into a very real post-Christian era. People don’t just need to hear it; they need to personally experience the profound life changing love of the Lord Jesus Christ.


It is our responsibility as Christians to let that light shine. By the grace of Almighty God may we learn to look a lot more like the Mason jar at my Nana and Papa’s house. As times get darker may we get brighter and brighter.


….But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: Romans 5:20

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