Hi, this is Joni. Let me sing for you an old hymn my daddy used to sing around the campfire.
Brightly beams our Father’s mercies
From His lighthouse evermore
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights keep burning
Send a gleam across the waves.
Some poor faintly troubling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
When we were little, my favorite memories are of singing old hymns like this one around our campfire on the beach near Rehoboth, Delaware. In fact, "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning" was usually reserved for singing last, right before the mist began to overtake our campfire. We break up the logs and ashes, then gather our blankets and trek back over the dunes to our tent. Daddy's flashlight led the way to the top of the barrier dune between the beach and the smaller sandy mounds where our tents nestled. I was just a little girl. I trudged behind my daddy, dragging my blanket. We crested the top of the mountainous dune and paused. I looked to the south I could spot the Fenwick Island lighthouse and to the north, the glow of the town of Rehoboth Beach miles up the coast. We were high enough on that dune to see the starlight shimmer on Indian River Bay several hundred yards to the east. I reached for my daddy’s hand.
“Daddy," I said, "what does it mean when sing, ‘Let the lower lights be burning?’” That’s when my father pointed straight ahead into the dark. A red light on the Indian River Bay blinked on, then off. A green channel marker did the same. “Honey, those are the lower lights right there. They mark where the water is deep enough for a boat to safely sail. If those lights go out, sailors won’t be able to tell where the sandbar is. Ships have wrecked on many shores for want of channel markers, Joni.”
“God is the lighthouse and we are his lower lights. We point the way, we show where it’s safe to go. Sweetheart, that’s what you do,” he said to me as we slid down the other side of the sand dune. “I do?” I asked him, a little incredulously.
“Yes, Joni, you do,” he said, pronouncing a fact about me that I was too young to feel. “Joni, it’s like what you’ve learned from Sunday school... ' Let your light so shine before men.’ that's what you do."
Hmmm. He said that to me over 50 years ago. And to this day I hope, I trust, I pray I am still doing what my father told me to do -- I'm still being a lower light, a channel marker, pointing others where it's safe to go. With God as the lighthouse, friend, I’m going to tell you something: you are a lower light. And I want you to join me and marking the way so that others might see where safe harbor is. Because the times are stormy and the winds of change and adversity are blowing hard -- it doesn't surprise me (does it you?) That so many believers are being blown off course these days?
My daddy’s has long gone on to heaven and it’s why I wrote a little booklet called "When Heaven Arrives" – he inspired it. I'd love to send it to you. It's got some tips for channel markers like you and me, ways that we can let our light really shine during these stormy times. So visit me today at JoniandFriendsradio.org or call 1-888-522-5664 and keep your lower light burning, friend. Send your beam across the wave, because some poor fainting, struggling seaman, you – through Jesus Christ -- may save.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 91376
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