Children of Light

1 Samuel 15:22–31; Ephesians 5:1–9

Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. Samuel’s words to Saul have echoed through the centuries. They cut through every religious performance to reach the heart of the matter: God wants you, not your offerings.

Saul’s kingdom is torn from him in this moment. Not because his sin was uniquely terrible—David would commit worse—but because Saul could not own it. When confronted, his first response was denial, then justification, then blame-shifting. Only when the consequences became clear did he finally say, I have sinned. But by then, he was confessing to avoid punishment, not from genuine contrition. The quality of our repentance matters.

"The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Paul picks up the theme in Ephesians with the language of light and darkness: Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Notice: Paul does not say you were in darkness. He says you were darkness. The transformation is not of location but of identity.

To be a child of light is to become transparent—to have nothing hidden, nothing defended, nothing hoarded in the dark. It is the opposite of Saul’s posture, which was all about managing appearances. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, Paul writes, but instead expose them. The word expose is elegchete—to bring to light, to make visible what was concealed.

Evagrius Ponticus, the desert theologian, taught that self-knowledge is the beginning of salvation. Not self-improvement—self-knowledge. We must see ourselves clearly before we can be changed. The eight thoughts he catalogued—gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory, pride—were not meant as a guilt list but as a diagnostic tool. Know the thought, and you can resist it. Hide from it, and it will master you.

In the film A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler. Everyone around him—even his bishop—urged him to comply. No one will know, they said. God sees your heart. But Jägerstätter understood that living as a child of light meant refusing to hide, even when hiding would save his life.

Today, ask yourself: where am I managing appearances instead of living in the light? Where is the gap between what I project and what is true? Lent strips away the performance. It invites us—gently but insistently—into the light, where the fruit is good and right and true.

Paul's language of light and darkness is not dualistic in the Gnostic sense—it does not demonize the physical world or the body. Rather, it describes two orientations of the self. Darkness is the state of hiddenness, of concealment, of living behind the mask. Light is the state of openness, of transparency, of allowing ourselves to be seen as we are. The call to be children of light is not a call to moral perfection. It is a call to honesty. And honesty, as every recovering addict knows, is the first and hardest step toward freedom.