June 16, 2026
Blocking The Light
Psalm 119:105 – “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
There’s a massive shade on the front window at work that someone pulls down during certain hours of the day. When it’s up, natural light floods the entire front of the office — the space feels open, warm, and alive. When it’s down, the same space feels closed off and artificially lit, dependent entirely on whatever the overhead fixtures can produce. The shade doesn’t destroy the sunlight. The sun is still doing exactly what it has always done. The shade just prevents it from getting in.
What’s worth noticing is that the shade doesn’t lower itself. Someone makes a choice to pull it down, usually for a practical reason — too much glare on a screen, too much heat near the window. The reasoning isn’t malicious. It rarely is. But the effect is the same regardless of the intention — the light gets blocked.
That’s a precise picture of how spiritual drift usually happens. People rarely make a dramatic decision to shut God out. What happens instead is a series of smaller, practical choices — gradually crowding the schedule until there’s no longer time for Scripture, allowing a relationship to pull attention away from spiritual community, permitting an entertainment habit to occupy the hours that used to belong to prayer. None of it feels like a decisive move away from God. But the cumulative effect is a life with the shade pulled down.
John 8:12 records Jesus describing Himself as the light of the world, with a specific promise — whoever follows Him will not walk in darkness. The light is constant. What varies is what we allow to stand between us and it.
The shade doesn’t lower itself. That part is always a choice.
Today’s Prayer:
Lord, show me what I have allowed to block Your light in my life. Give me the honesty to identify it and the discipline to remove it. Amen.
Reflection Question:
What has gradually pulled down the shade in your life and what would it take to make the deliberate choice to raise it again?