light is an interesting subject

So I'm going through an interesting subject - one that I am beginning to understand that I can't begin to understand. The subject is light.

I realized today that light is a way that God refers to himself, and to use a rather vulgar example, somehow it's the best description of his "brand" or his product - or the best description of what it feels like when you're around the Lord.  How it feels when you're living the life the Lord would prescribe.

It makes me recoil a bit to describe the Lord using the word "brand", but if a brand is what you're known by, then that's why I chose that word. It seems to be the word that God uses most to describe himself.

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So the word is light. Jesus used it to describe himself: "I am the light and the life of the world". So if I were really, super duper wise, I'd understand the difference between the two words light and life. Is he referring to something like energy and matter? I don't know and couldn't presume to guess. What I do understand is that I don't even have a kindergarten understanding on the subject, but that I can perhaps get closer if I ask for and receive that gift. What I do understand though, is that Christ referred to himself as two things on this occasion: light and life. That he chose to refer to himself with these two words makes them both pretty good subjects to consider, to study, and to request further understanding about.

So that goes me to today's reading. Alma 36:20. The back story is that Alma had been visited by an angel and corrected from his evil ways, persecuting those who were trying to live well. His pain for doing so left him in a lump on the ground for days. In his words, nothing could be so exquisite and so bitter. He used the language to describe an indescribably painful moment, and with that tool, used the strongest words he could. It was a biblically bad day. 3 of them.

And then he used the same words to describe his joy after he felt the light of forgiveness. "And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold, yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"

Interesting, isn't it, that Alma could use any of the language's million words (I don't know how many there are) to describe his feelings about the event, and he used the word "light"? What is it about that word? Is it that light is an as-of-yet not understood sector of physics? A physics professor will tell you everything is either matter or waves, but that light is neither-and both. It doesn't fit in either category. How does this fit in with the "light and truth?" I have no answers.

Alma 37:23, and the word is used again "...a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light...". Here again the Lord refers to darkness as the adversary, and all things evil, wrong, angry and sad. And light when things are right.

It is said that people shine when their lives are well lived - that you can see it in their faces. Decide for yourself if that's true, but I often perceive that some people feel lighter, or brighter to me, and it's easy to be around them. Some lift me because I feel who they are, and I yearn to be around them and feel their light.

I don't understand light at all. What I do understand is that any light I have, I don't have. Like a lighthouse, it's not my light. It gets generated somewhere that's not me. The power doesn't belong to me, I just direct it. But I can direct it, and use it, and help others by directing and reflecting whatever it is. I don't have to understand it to use it as I help others navigate their own paths.

May we all seek for that light. May all of our windows be brightly lit by the Lord, and may we brighten our own residences by directing that light toward those around us.