You are a City. On a Hill.

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden." - Matthew 5:14

It has become a routine for me that every night before I lie on my bed I always turn on my reading lamp on my bedside table and turn off my bedroom light.

It has just dawned on me that they both apparently use the same type of lightbulb that consumes the same amount of energy. Yet somehow my reading lamp shines less brighter because of the shades put around it.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

When I was in Israel late last year, the tour guide explained further on the phrase "city on a hill". Back in the days where the road between two cities are not equipped with lights, it was important for a city to be visible from a distance to help travellers reach that city. Therefore, cities were usually built on a top of a hill for greater exposure from afar with lights that radiated from within the city.

We are a city. Yet somehow sometimes in life our lights are not always "on a hill" as they are supposed to be. We dont shine as bright as we should. We are being covered by shades, and even though we shine bright, people around us are not being impacted by it.

So who put the shades?

There are many answers to this. The first answer, which is the most obvious one, is ourselves. We can sometimes create own our barriers without us realising it, may it be our own busy schedules or ineffective positioning of priorities.

The second answer would be others. Sometimes this can be deliberate attempts from people around you to prevent you from lighting others, but other times it can be a product of mistaken application of love.

What I mean by this is that sometimes people around us can become so overprotective to the things we do, they end up becoming more than just a shield around us, they become barriers and shades that prevent us from reaching our full potential.

I have heard stories from people on how they feel imprisoned in life simply because they are being dictated as to how they should become. As much as I believe in the art of obedience and its application through faith, I also believe in the possibility that mistakes can come not just from ourselves but also from other people. When this happens, our response is not to change ourselves but to support those who have "wronged" us so that they can finally understand the limitation they have posed on us and change their behaviour towards us.

When you lead someone, it is very critical that we do not become overprotective in shielding those who are under our cover, or it might end up becoming a shade that prevents them from growing.

I am suddenly reminded by the biology experiment back in our primary school days when we grow beansprouts that we place inside a black box with only a small hole on the side. The beansprout will grow on a shape that goes towards the hole where the light of the sun can come into the box.

The beansprout doesn't grow towards the box, but towards the area where box doesn't exist.

When we become a leader, we should know that people do not grow towards us. They grow towards God. And sometimes we can be so clouded by our own needs to make people succeed, we try to mould people according to our will rather than letting the Sun do the growing.

Yes, without the box the beansprout might not have survived the wind or plant-eating insects, but we should be aware that the ultimate source of growth is not the protection that the box has given, but rather something that the box indeliberately took away from the beansprout: the Sun.

Let us introspect ourselves:
1. Have I become a city on a hill? Have I reached my full potential?
2. If I haven't, then who needs to change?
3. As a leader, have I, directly or indirectly, become the very person who prevents others from reaching their full potential by becoming to harsh or simply becoming too overprotective?

May you find the true answers to the questions so that you can be set free.