Light Flows In

I learned something in Greek class yesterday that has been on my mind somewhat heavily and I wanted to share it because, for the first time ever, a couple verses of scripture make sense to me. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 is one of the most amazing passages of scripture. Jesus has so much to say! The model prayer of 6:9-13 is the climax of the entire sermon. Stylistically, the prayer also has expansion elements with Jesus giving his own commentary on what each phrase of the Lord’s Prayer means. Hang with me, I’m getting to my point.
One phrase of the Lord’s prayer says “your kingdom come.” The parallel to this phrase is found later in 6:22-23 which says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” I have always heard these verses explained by saying that we should be careful of what we look at. I am not saying this is not important but to simply stop with that may mean missing something far greater that Jesus may have had in mind.
Since the phrase of the prayer is “your kingdom come” think about God’s kingdom, with him as ruler, full of glory. One of the ways glory is pictured in scripture is with the imagery of light. If something is brilliant and streaming with light we may say that it is glorious. How does light enter the body? It enters through the eye. On an individual level, praying this prayer is like asking for God’s kingdom to be inside you, in your heart. It is asking for his glory to enter you and change you, and subsequently it is also a submission to God’s rule in our lives. However, spiritually speaking, if we pray this part of the prayer with closed eyes not really wanting God’s rule and kingdom in us, we end up with no light but darkness within us. At worst, we may have a false sense of righteousness sense we went through the motions of praying the prayer and end up with “light that is darkness,” which is what the Pharisees had.
But on a positive note, how awesome it is that we have a Christ who explains, “nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) We have a God who is so loving and caring he wants to live intrinsically connected with each of us in our individual lives.