That Backwards Light

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you,

both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:12-13

Because it is God who is in there, in me.

If we could step inside our being, into our Spirit, we might behold our salvation not like an object but like a place... a sanctuary in the shadows of our darkest inside corners. A cathedral where light streams through broken pieces of brilliant color.

But the light is inside and it is pushing out.

Always further and further out.

And we tremble at this thought because it is GOD who lives there, inside of us.  It is God who has entered in and gotten to work sweeping floors and washing the windows of our soul.  Making us cleaner, a little cleaner every day.  He fills our vacancy and then he shines hard out of it. It is his work. It is the work he wants to do in us. 

It is his good pleasure to do it.

And yet somehow it is our work, too.  This salvation, this place within me where he is living, it is something that I do now.  It is the shining forth of that light, his glory, into the world.  

He lets us be a part.

So we work out our salvation, but we tremble with the reverence of knowing we stand on Holy Ground. We are working with the One who works in us.

(Photo credit: Strasbourg Cathedral, Patrick Hertzog/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)