Pilgr-image 15 - The Greater Righteousness

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 5:20

A man who professes an external law is a man who is standing in the light of a lamp which is attached to a post. He is standing in the light of this lamp, he sees the light, and he has no other place to go to. A man who professes the teaching of Christ is like a man carrying a lamp before him on a more or less long pole: the light is always before him; it always incites him to follow it, and continually opens up in front of him a new illuminated space which draws him on.… - Leo Tolstoy

I love this quote from Leo Tolstoy.  It reminds me that the teachings of Jesus are not to keep us in one place but to be following where the Spirit leads us.   Jesus called followers to go where he went and to go where he sent them.  It was to be dynamic, vital, and alive.  It wasn’t to be just about keeping things as they were.  God is always doing a new thing.

So, on that note...what do you see in this image?

Do you see a light post with an orange/red light on top?  Or something else?

What you are actually seeing is the morning sun (shining through the smoke from the Canadian wildfires) way off at the horizon looking like it is the lamp on top of a post.  I just happened to be walking by at the exact right moment for this photograph to come out as it did.  But here’s what I love about it.  This feels like Tolstoy’s quote.  It may look like a static light on top of a post that illuminates just that one area.  But in reality it is the light that is infinitely bigger than any light we can build.

But here’s the difference between this light and the one Tolstoy writes about...if I am carrying a light on a pole ahead of me, I still control where the light shines.  But this light is out of my control.  While I can know the patterns of the sun, I cannot control it.  So it is with our following the way of Jesus.  I cannot control where Jesus leads me.  I simply can control whether I follow where the Light leads.