Thought for the Week: Bob Ward has some light reading
‘Fox’s gift was to give light a central place.’
At one of our recent discussion groups, a participant said: ‘You Quakers go on about “holding people in the light”. But what does that mean and how do you do it?’ A pertinent question indeed.
According to Genesis, God launched the act of creation in the dark and only then said: ‘Let there be light.’ The light revealed what had come into being, and it looked good. For many creatures a sense of sight is vital to the conduct of their lives – the eyes have it!
Subsequently a psalmist declared: ‘The Lord is my light and salvation; whom should I fear?’ Thus, God became understood not only as the originator of light but its continuing source. Light was the very nature of God. Later psalms pursue this theme, too: ‘A harvest of light has arisen for the righteous; and joy for the upright in heart.’
In the New Testament this view is given even more emphasis. Paul regards Christians as those who had come from darkness into the light: ‘Prove yourselves at home in the light, for where light is there is a harvest of goodness, righteousness and truth.’ And subsequently, of course, John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as the light: ‘I am the light of the world.’
George Fox read his Bible closely. And he was not alone in picking up on such a powerful metaphor. In 1647 Ralph Cudworth, one of a group now known as the ‘Cambridge Platonists’, preached a mighty sermon to the members of the House of Commons. In it he emphasised: ‘All the books and writings which we converse with, they can but represent spiritual objects to our understandings; which yet we can never see in their own true figure, colour and proportion, until we have a divine light within, to irradiate and shine upon them. Though there be never such excellent truths, concerning Christ, and his Gospel, set down in words and letters; yet they will be but unknown characters to us, until we have a living spirit within us that can decipher them: until the same spirit, by secret whispers in our hearts, do comment upon them.’
It’s possible that Fox adopted an idea that was already in circulation, but his gift was to give it a central place. He directed people to submit themselves to the divine light of Christ, which exposed their frailties but enabled them to see the truth, what love required of them.
So ‘holding someone in the light’ must be a matter of our light within responding with compassion to the needs of another. Perhaps we could adopt a stand-by mode, a prayerful alertness that would allow us to ignore the rowdy demands of self. Then we would all be better-placed to hear those secret whispers of the heart.
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