ONCE a sunbeam found its way into a house situated not many yards from the seashore. It was a bright summer day, and the Venetian blind was let down to keep the room cool, but this sunbeam would find its way in. In it came through a small opening in the blind. Now, you will hardly guess what so sorely puzzled little Willie, who was in the room at the time the sunbeam entered.
Wherever the stream of light caused by the sunbeam went, there little Willie saw a thin line like smoke. Willie was much puzzled. Then his mother explained the nature of it to him, and told him it was dust.
“Dust!" he cried. "Then how is it that the other parts of the room, where the sunbeam does not shine, are not also full of dust?”
Then his mother told him that it was the same all over the room, although he could not see it; and, indeed, that it is the same everywhere all over the world, in a greater or less degree.
In the evening, after the sun had done shining for that day, Willie begged his father to tell him more about the dust.
So his father told Willie that, although he could not see it, yet the dust was in the room still, and that the reason he saw it before was because the little stream of bright light which shone into the comparatively dark room made all things clear to the eye where the sunbeam fell. Then Willie's father told him that the sunbeam is God's light, which is so pure and bright that it detects the dust in any room, no matter how clean the room may be.
But God has also a light to show the dust of sin in our hearts. That light is the Word of God. When the Holy Spirit of God makes this light shine into our hearts, we find that they are "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”
God gave us this light to show us these things, and God's light makes our sins plain to us. We may try to shut out the light, and succeed for a while.
Sometimes, by trying to keep the room, as it were, very clean—that is, by trying to be good—people fancy there is no dust flying about, no sins filling the heart; but directly the light shines in, it shows that the heart is full of iniquity. It is very foolish to suppose that we are not sinners just because we do not see our wicked thoughts and deeds.
The light of God's Holy Word not only shows what we are, but it shows us what Christ is. The light of God's Word reveals Him. It shows us that we may look on Him and live, and be saved.
Has the light shone into your heart, and shown you that you are a sinner? Has it shown you that Jesus died for sinners?