I just spent most of this evening on my back porch enjoying a yearly miracle. Every year during the Summer I have always been fortunate enough to get a week or two of watching the fireflies light up the world. I can remember seeing them and chasing after them when I was only a boy of four or five. I can remember helping my young cousins catch them and then let them go while my wife held our baby boy nearly fifteen years ago. I can remember being blessed by seeing thousands of them lighting up my back yard these last few years. Tonight they seemed to almost dance along as they flew over the tombstones in the graveyard behind my house. Their shining lights seemed to blink a beautiful reminder into my soul that there is no death only everlasting light.

I sometimes wish that we humans could shine our lights as clearly and beautifully as our firefly friends do, but I guess God in His infinite, loving wisdom meant for us to shine our light in other ways. We do, after all, have a powerful, glowing, wondrous light within us. It comes out of us as goodness, kindness, love, joy, compassion, caring, peace, happiness, and delight. It shines from us whenever we share it and is more brilliant than a million fireflies.

Make sure then to shine that light within you. Reach down into your soul and bring out all the love, joy, goodness, and light that God fills you with. Bring it out, nourish it, and make it burn bright. Then share it with the world. Let it shine in your smile, glow in your kind words, brighten others??™ lives through your loving actions, and illuminate the world in your joyous life. Be a daily miracle. Be a firefly of love for God. Let the light within you set the world aglow with its brilliance.

?© 2004 by Joseph Mazella