Read Exodus 34: 29 – 35 and Luke 9: 28 – 36

On a trip to a local Church the children were told that the beautiful stained-glass window pictures with the sun streaming through them depicted Saints, people with special significance, or special spiritual gifts of healing or teaching.

Once they were all back at school the teacher asked “What is a Saint?” well, one little boy put his hand up and answered “a Saint is someone what the light shines through”.

And that’s quite right – Saints are people who reflect the light of God through their lives and sometimes it shows in their faces.

Moses was someone what the light, God’s light, shone through, as of course was Jesus.

I wonder, did you know that the Greek word translated in our Bibles as ‘Saint’ in the New Testament is the word people in the early Church called ‘Christians’ or ‘followers of Christ’.

So, the word was never intended to describe someone with any special significance, or special spiritual gifts of healing etc.

Therefore, if we describe ourselves as Christians, we should technical call ourselves saints, because we are all intended to be people who reflect the light of Christ to the world through the way we live our lives and the way we talk about God and about and to others.  We should be a people who act as a beacon of light to show the world what it means to truly put Jesus’ teachings into practice

We are all supposed to be people what the light shines through!

Luke often describes Jesus praying before key moments in his life.

How much time I wonder do we put aside time to pray, to listen to God?  I’m very aware that I could do with spending more time in prayer. Like Moses and Jesus, I feel closest to God on a hill or mountain, though any outdoors time is better than indoors, but I don’t often find enough, or make enough time to do that.

Of course, we can’t always find time to be up a mountain, and we certainly can’t stay up a mountain for ever.

We talk about mountain top experiences, moments of great joy and clarity, times and/or places where heaven seems to touch earth – we sometimes call these ‘thin places’. But life has to be lived in the valley and the reality and murkiness of life.

So, it’s important to listen for God in the everyday, while we are at work, on a bus, doing the dishes? Perhaps there are glorious moments to be had if we were just to listen, because God wants to reveal his glory in the everyday.

Jesus came down from the mountain, as he must, and immediately healed someone.  You see, the glorious and affirming moment of ‘transfiguration’ didn’t stop Jesus doing his ministry, doing what God had called him to do.

I wonder, do we get caught up in the moment, like the disciples did, do we focus only on worshipping God and stop doing what we are called to? Or on constructing and preserving a building.

Perhaps Peter wanted to hold onto the glory, to contain it by building tents for Jesus, Elijah and Moses. Perhaps he was afraid he would lose the power of the moment (as Moses did, away from God’s presence) and wanted to capture it.

We need to hang onto Jesus, but not for the power and the glory, not to make a ‘statement’, we need to hang on to Jesus as a model for our lives so that we will indeed be worthy of the name Saint – Christian.

Rev Janine