Revolve and Reflect

My girls are doing a project on Thomas Edison this week--a fellow homeschooler! Though Mr. Edison obviously led an accomplished life, bettering our lives with his many inventions, in his younger years, he was labelled a "slow learner," prompting his mother to pull him out of school and take charge of his learning herself. Instead of focusing on his inadequacies, she encouraged Thomas's enginuity and wealth of ideas. Thomas didn't allow his life to revolve around negativity; he chose instead to diligently focus on his inventions.

We reflect what we allow ourselves to revolve around. Have you seen the fun Chrisitan slogan: "Be the moon, reflect the Son?" The moon follows the earth in its orbit around the sun, and the light of the moon comes from its reflection of the sun.

When my "orbit" is right, my life is revolving around the Lord and my relationship with Him. When I allow my focus to shift to the worries of today--parenting and homeschool frustrations, the stress of our crazy schedule, my own OCD tendencies--that is exactly what I begin to reflect. It ain't pretty!

Let's face it, our life circumstances may vary slightly from season to season, but there's always some amount of chaos involved. It takes intentional effort to remove our eyes from the chaos and onto the God of order. And when we do, we reflect Him. For me, this requires a shift in my conversation topics (i.e., stop complaining!),  a greater devotion to prayer, a purposeful mood change, and a delving into His Word.

It's not always stress that is competing for my focus, either. Often, it's simply hobbies or things I enjoy that I have allowed to overstep their boundaries. While I believe that God gives us desires for good things and blesses us with enjoyment in them, He never wants those things to overshadow our focus on Him. When they do, we can begin to reflect a spirit of greed, materialism, or selfishness.

When you find that you are not reflecting the light of Christ in your life, take a step back and see what you're revolving around. If your orbit is not around the Son, reposition yourself. A dark world will see the difference!