“Illumination is obvious in a place of darkness.”

Ever heard that quote before? I start my daily devotionals with bible quotes, but today I chose to use a different source. Don’t bother with google, you won’t find it anywhere. I said it. Short and to the point. Quotes are best if easily said, easily remembered, and hold at least one point of interest.

I dare say that most Christians have at least a few well remembered bible quotes laid up firmly in our memory. “Judge not…” “I am the Way…” “Faith small as a …” “For God so loved…” “Our Father which art in heaven…” I am sure that I have tickled some memory cells with these words. It doesn’t take a great bible scholar to memorize meaningful quotes.

2 Corinthians 3:2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:

There is the address, there is the quote. Let me ask you this pointed question. How do you read a person? If we are a living epistle what message is sent without the written word? Do people read us by our ability to quote the bible accurately? They know less about the bible than you do, even if you can only quote one or two verses.

Illumination does not come to those in dark places by obscure quotes from a book they have never read. It come from your heart, that dwelling place God has made within you.

Job 41:18 By his neesings (from the root) a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

Luke 13:19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.

This parable is about church growth. The issues are not clear unless you look to the harvest. Mustard trees in those days were pruned back to stop vertical growth. The harvest of mustard seeds was performed by hand at a height where workers did not have to climb ladders.

What does that have to do with this parable? When a church gets really big, it attracts “fowls of the air”. The harvest is hindered and the fowls eat the seed. In modern terms large churches remove the pastor away from the flock. An organizational structure isolates the shepherd from the sheep. Size and structure require maintenance, insurance, utilities, cleaning, repair, subsystem upgrades, all the things that drain resources.

All these “things” hinder the harvest. The harvest is still done at the personal level, not above their heads. We see larger and larger portions of tithes being used to support things that have little to do with the harvest. Is that an effective stewardship of God’s resources? Doesn’t that isolate him even more so from the flock?

Matthew 20:27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

That cannot be done from the lofty branches for the workers are on the ground.