If you were God, how would you let people know you exist? Fifty-meter flaming letters in the sky? The face of Jesus in every burnt piece of toast?

These might seem like good ways to get the message out, but God in his wisdom has a different idea… us.

Jesus says “You are the light of the world”.

He doesn’t say “You might become…” or “If you try really hard one day…” or “Once you get enough knowledge and experience then you’ll be…”

This is a spiritual reality - an identity - given to us by grace. Nothing we deserve or earn, but something God gives to us. We are the Light of the World.

This is important because we often can suffer from an inferiority complex that God does not want us to have.

It’s easy to believe other people might be the Light of the World - people who have it all together, who know lots of Bible verses by heart, who seem very respectable or confident in church situations. But we can doubt it could be true for us.

A bit of context can help us here. Jesus is talking to his newly recruited disciples - young men with no religious training who make lots of mistakes as the story goes on - and a growing crowd. It’s likely the crowd was made up of very ordinary and unimportant people, because people with important jobs and responsibilities probably couldn’t head off to hear an itinerant preacher in the middle of the day.

The point is - in Matthew 5 Jesus tells a bunch of normal, untried, inexperienced people, “You are the light of the world.”

And he is telling us the same thing - so we should try to believe him and grow in confidence and expectation that we will shine out God’s light to the people and situations in the world around us.

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Light gets used in two ways in the Bible - there’s light that illuminates and light that exposes. One is about revealing God and the other is about judgement.

In Matthew 5 Jesus is talking about illumination. In fact, the Message translation puts it “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”

It’s worth mentioning this, because often we worry that people will react badly to us because they think we’re judgey, holier-than-thou Christians. We imagine we might do an Act of Joy and people will be hostile - asking us about religious wars or suffering.

But you’ll find this a very rare reaction. People are wonderfully open and warm to experiencing something of God’s light.

And so, if we think about illuminating God and what he is like, it means doing Acts of Joy should, in a very small way, demonstrate God’s beauty to people. 

A helpful way to think about this is from Galatians 5:22-23, where the Bible tells us what the Holy Spirit is doing in us - making us people with more ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’.

These are described as ‘fruit’. And like natural fruit, we can plant seeds into the people and situations around us.

So during Joyfest if we do anything that brings love, joy, kindness and so on into people’s lives we are planting a Kingdom seed. This can help us think of creative ways to do Acts of Joy.

No one walks into a house and says, “Wow! What genius architect designed this house? Who would have thought to hang the lightbulb from the ceiling? That must be so useful at night time! We have all our lightbulbs in the cupboard to protect the bulbs!” 

Of course we don’t, because it’s obvious you put the light where you need it to shine. This is the exact point Jesus is making (and not the English idiom about not being falsely humble).

The idea here is God knows what he’s doing and he has placed every single one of us where he wants us to shine his light. 

We are strategically placed in our homes, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, schools, colleges and universities. In the places we shop, hang out, and the activities we do. Wherever we find ourselves - God wants us to be there shining.

It can be difficult to believe this, because our lives don’t feel very strategic. We live in our house because it has the right number of bedrooms. We have our job because someone left and we were offered a promotion.

It can all feel rather random. Surely this idea only applies to those serious Christians who have a ‘calling’?

The truth is this: God is bigger than all our randomness - and even our mistakes and bad decisions. We may feel our life is a bit messy and ‘unspiritual’ but the spiritual reality is God has strategically placed us where he wants us to shine his light. 

Corrie Ten Boom has an analogy that’s helpful. She talked about how, when she was a young girl, she’d look up at her mother doing embroidery. From her position on the floor she could only see the back of the embroidery, where it looked like a mess of random colours and stitches. But from her mother’s perspective it was creating a beautiful image. 

In the same way, while we might feel our lives seem a bit random, from God’s perspective he’s doing something connected, strategic and beautiful.

The real implication for us is to start to look at our whole lives differently. It means every aspect of our lives are spiritual - God is involved and interested.

And it means we should look at our street, our colleagues, the strangers we pass at the bus stop, all with a fresh perspective - a sense of purpose and wonderful opportunity.