If you’ve seen the movie ‘The Shack’, you’ll probably remember the scene where, standing on a hill with God, Mack, the hero of the film sees line after line of lit up, glowing forms on the horizon.

As Mack looks more intently, one of the figures walks toward him and he discovers he knows this person. But if you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to watch the film.

The reason I mention it is because this particular scene was on my mind recently. I was away on a work trip and we were at a women’s conference. Although I was in fully-fledged work mode, as the band started to sing, I felt myself melting into the lovely worship time.

The songs were gentle and sweet and as I shut my eyes, something strange began to happen.

I could ‘see’ silhouettes of the people in the room and as they worshipped, they started to light up and glow. All over the room there were warm, lovely, glowing silhouettes.

At first I wasn’t sure what this picture meant, but it seemed to me that as people worshipped, their spirits were coming alive, blossoming, lighting up, glowing and basking in the warmth of God’s presence.

But also, in the picture in my mind there were silhouettes which weren’t lit up.

Instead they were dark, un-moving and passive and it felt like God gave me a question to speak out. It was a simple question;

Who put your light out?

Now I was in a church which was not my own, I didn’t really know who was in charge so it didn’t seem appropriate to share it.

But throughout the afternoon, that image kept coming back to me and later, as there was more worship, it felt like I could see it even more clearly and the question became even more urgent;

Who put your light out?

As I prayed about it, I felt the message behind it became clearer.

As we worship and our spirits tune into heaven, we come alive on the inside. I don’t know if our spirits do literally light up, but it strikes me as being possible and very likely.

However, it’s possible to outwardly appear to worship but internally, nothing is happening.

The lights are out.

No one’s at home.

Our light can go out for so many different reasons.

It can be life circumstances, sadness, apathy, so many different things.

But the end result is always the same.

There is no light, no glow. No one might actually know. You might be doing an incredible job of keeping up appearances.

To be honest, if it had been my church, I would have taken a big leap of faith and shared what was happening but an opportunity didn’t present itself.

However, later, mulling it over, a friend suggested that this may not have even been intended for the church we were in, but instead intended for someone reading this blog.

So, I ask the question again;

Who put your light out?

Was it a death in the family? A difficult work situation? A series of small things which chipped away at your confidence, which led you to think that God didn’t care any more?

Here’s the thing (and I felt this SO clearly today), there is no condemnation in this. If your light has gone out, now is not the time to beat yourself up, or to think that you’re unworthy of God’s attention or favour.

It’s actually the total opposite.

Full of compassion and grace, today God wants to turn that light on again.

He sees past the pretence, the fake smiles, all the barriers, dramas and conflicts and he just wants you to take one step toward him.

It’s actually pretty easy.

It just takes s simple, plain-English, heartfelt commitment to turn back to God and ask him to fix your broken signal.

He is full of compassion and kindness, not condemnation. He wants to speak to us, to point us in the right direction, to show us things.

So if this quick message was actually intended for someone reading this today, then I’m praying for you.