Light

I've been working my way through a daily devotional that was published in 1972 called Every Day with the Psalms by Mendell Taylor. I don't remember where I picked up this book, but my guess is that it was from someone in my church who was downsizing their book collection. To be honest, what probably attracted me to the book was the teal leather cover with its understated design and gold debossed letters.

In reflecting on Psalm 44:3, Taylor writes "What sunlight is to the physical world, that is what the light of God's countenance is to the spiritual world." More modern translations, like the following, capture the poetic beauty but miss the Hebrew idiom Taylor is using:

God, we have heard about you.
Our ancestors told us
what you did in their days,
in days long ago.
With your power you forced the nations out of the land
and placed our ancestors here.
You destroyed those other nations,
but you made our ancestors grow strong.
It wasn’t their swords that took the land.
It wasn’t their power that gave them victory.
But it was your great power and strength.
You were with them because you loved them.
(Psalm 44:1-3, NCV)

Other translations say their victory was by "the light of your presence" (NASB), "the light of your face" (NIV), or "the light of Your countenance" (NKJV). It is His very being, His presence, that is victorious. The word "light" in Psalm 44:3 is the same word used when we read the first few sentences of the Bible.  Light was the first thing God spoke into existence, and it was good. Upon creating light, He separates it from darkness (Genesis 1:3-5). Darkness cannot exist where light is. Or as John said it:

...God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:5-7, NASB).

I pray that God will show me what His light looks like. May there be no confusion between light and dark.