More more, less less!

Luke 8:16-18

No one lights a lamp and then hides it under a vessel or puts it under a bed. No! he puts it on a lamp-stand so that those who come in may see the light. There is nothing hidden which will not be made manifest; there is nothing secret which win not be known and brought into the open. Take care, then, how you listen; for to him who has it will be given; and from him who has not there shall be taken away even what he thinks he has.

Food for thought!

Here we have three sayings of Jesus, each with its own warning for life.

(i) No one lights a lamp and then hides it under a vessel or puts it under a bed. No! he puts it on a lamp-stand so that those who come in may see the light.

This saying stresses the essential conspicuousness of the Christian life. Christianity is in its very nature something which must be seen. It is easy to find prudential reasons why we should not flaunt our Christianity in the world's face. In all of us, there is an instinctive fear of being different; and the world is always likely to persecute those who do not conform to pattern.

And yet this is exactly what Jesus calls us to be, different! A writer tells how he kept hens. In the hen-run all the hens were precisely the same in marking except one. The one different hen was pecked to death by the other occupants of the hen-run. Even in the animal world, being different is a crime.

(ii) "There is nothing hidden which will not be made manifest; there is nothing secret which will not be known and brought into the open."

This one stresses the impossibility of secrecy. There are three people from whom we try hide things.

(a) Sometimes we try to hide things from ourselves. We shut our eyes to the consequences of certain actions and habits, consequences of which we are well aware. It is like a man deliberately shutting his eyes to symptoms of an illness which he knows he has. We have only to state that to see its incredible folly.

(b) Sometimes we try to hide things from our fellow men. Things have a way of coming out. The man with a secret is an unhappy man. The happy man is the man with nothing to hide. It is told that once an architect offered to build for Plato a house in which every room would be hidden from the public eye. "I will give you twice the money," said Plato, "if you build me a house into every room of which all men's eyes can see." Happy is the man who can speak like that.

(c) Sometimes we try to hide things from God. No man ever attempted a more impossible task. We would do well to have before our eyes forever the text which says, "Thou art a God of seeing." (Gen.16:13.)

(iii) "Take care, then, how you listen; for to him who has it will be given; and from him who has not there shall be taken away even what he thinks he has."

This lays down the universal law that the man who has will get more; and that the man who has not will lose what he has. If a man is physically fit and keeps himself so, his body will be ready for greater efforts; if he lets himself go flabby, he will lose even the abilities he has. The more a student learns, the more he can learn; but if he refuses to go on learning, he will lose the knowledge he has. This is just another way of saying that there is no standing still in life. All the time we are either going forward or going back; we are either getting better or getting worse; we are either getting more or getting less.

This law works in both spiritual and material things; it works in businesses and in family affairs. It works everywhere, everyday, on everyone and in everything. If we really strive after more we will get more, if we don't strive enough, we will get less; if we strive for goodness and master this and that temptation, new heights of goodness will open to us; if we give up the battle and take the easy way, much of the resistance power we once possessed will be lost and we will slip from whatever height we had attained.

It is the law Jesus applied to last week's woman that anointed him with perfume: "So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; because she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."