When I was a young boy, I was asked by a man to help him clear some land that he had purchased. At the end of that day, he asked if I would help him move some lumber from one spot to another. As we moved the two by fours, he would hold each one up, look down it and express that it was good or bad. I had never seen anyone do such a thing. I learned that day that a board was useful due to whether it was crooked or not.
As I think back to that measuring moment, I am reminded that light factors in to the measurement of things. Light is the most common measuring stick in the universe. We measure whether things are straight or crooked by light. Surveyors use light to measure distances and angles, to see whether they are up or down, high or low, right or left. They have a little instrument they sight through with a small telescope on it.
How does it work? It uses light as a measurement. In the vast, far reaches of space today the only adequate measuring stick is light years, the distance measured by the speed of light. That is what light does, and that is what God does. God is a measuring stick, a point of reference. One can use God to measure everything else. People are forever seeking to solve the puzzles of life on every level around us.
Every one of us, are constantly asking ourselves the question, how do I know which one is right? How do I know who has the real answers? Where do I get a measuring stick that can be applied to these voices I hear?
This is where God comes in. God sees man according to the truth, according to the light and all the conflicting voices that we hear can be sorted out and measured by his revelation of what truth is. The Bible is the only measure there is. When you measure anything against God's Word, you learn the unpleasant truth that may be quite uncomfortable to you at the moment, that your dream will not work, it will only increase your misery, it will hurt and destroy everyone involved. Because you see that and have learned to trust the light a bit, you say "All right, even though I want to do this, I won't." Later on, the blindness passes and you are so grateful, so eternally thankful, that God's light stopped you from going on into darkness. "The light shines in darkness,"John says, "and the darkness cannot put it out," (John 1:5).
The problem with many, today, is that we have not fallen hard enough on the truth to discover the substance therein. The sad thing is that many will have to fall hard to come to the place where we are convinced of the truth. This was my story. I lacked a point of reference. I had not lived enough. And, when it became evident that my world was about to shatter with the passing of my earthly father, I got serious with the truth. God's truth has been faithful ever since that faithful day in 1981 to measure all things for me.
Now, I do not always get the light and the darkness defined correctly. This happens, partly, due to the fact that I am not always diligent to listen to truth which is His definition of anything.
My dad, the late Bob Young, was often quoted, "Some people are so narrow-minded, they could look through a key hole with both eyes." I have discovered that my narrow-mindedness has been useful to my Father who is in heaven. There have been times when He has left me in the dark, so that His measurement would be even more profound when I was in the position to see it.
