UCA SA - Reflection of the Week

Now in the Lord you are light

by Clive Conway

For once you were darkness … Ephesians 5:8 doesn’t say we were in darkness, but that we were darkness. That is to say, it isn’t simply an issue of behaviour; it is a condition of alienation, disconnection, a life lived without God’s healing presence. And the good news is equally bold – now in the Lord you are light. So the focus is not on striving toward moral perfection, but on waking up to who we already are in Christ, to our nature.

To “walk as children of light” is to let this God-made identity shape how we show up in the world. The fruit of that light is “all that is good and right and true”. Light reveals pathways forward; it makes healing possible; it restores dignity. When Paul speaks of exposing “the works of darkness”, it is not an instruction to shame or criticise people, but an invitation to bring harmful systems, practices, and patterns into the open so they can be transformed. What is exposed to the light, becomes visible, and what becomes visible is light.

To me, this is profoundly hopeful, in a time where many things seem hopeless. Nothing and no one is beyond redemption. Those things about ourselves we'd rather not confront, the injustices we inherit, our trauma, the biases we unconsciously or maybe consciously carry – do not disqualify us from God’s love.

In our time, to live as children of light is to actively take part in the fruitful works of light: confronting injustice with humility and persistence, amplifying voices that are silenced, creating communities where every person can flourish and radiate the light of God within them – the light that awakens, restores, and makes all things new.