The Valpo motto is broadcast in large letters from the front of the Arts and Sciences building; it flows down the center stained glass window in the Chapel; maybe you’ve even got some Valpo swag adorned with the phrase. En luce tua videmus lucem: in your light, we see light.
As Pastor Jim and I explored in a previous newsletter article, it’s easy to look up from our academic setting and interpret Valpo’s motto along the lines of “in your knowledge we see knowledge” or “in your truth we see truth.” Yet as we read the motto in the context of the psalm, we see that this image of God’s “light” is tied to God’s love, which shows in God’s care for all people and all of creation.
Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens,
And your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep;
You save humankind and animals, O Lord.
How priceless is your love, O God!
All people take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast upon the abundance of your house;
You give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the well of life,
And in your light we see light.
(Psalm 36:5-9)
This week, Valpo celebrated our annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day convocation under the theme “Being a Good Neighbor: What are You Doing for Others?” This question comes from MLK himself. He repeated the question (and his point) in sermons throughout his career, and one place it is captured for us is in the collection Strength to Love, in a sermon entitled “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.”
I could not help but see a connection to Psalm 36 and the Valpo motto as I read how King uses the same image of “light” to teach on the divine design and command to love each other:
Light has come into the world, and every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” God has so structured this universe that things do not quite work out rightly if men are not diligent in their cultivation of [concern for others].
Like Psalm 36, King points to God’s love – displayed in the divine design of the universe – to help us think about both the wisdom and the command to love one another. God’s love is as strong and sturdy as a mountain and as deep and abiding as the sea. God’s love is intentionally embedded in the design of creation: in the beauty of the sky, in the laws of physics – and in the pattern of human needs. As King goes on to say:
“I” cannot reach fulfillment without “thou.” The self cannot be self without other selves. Social psychologists tell us that we cannot truly be persons unless we interact with other persons. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent.
We are all interdependent on one another – we are all inextricably connected to one another – because that’s the way God designed it to be. So, King preaches, while one essential dimension of a complete life is caring for ourselves and pursuing our own callings, we must also ask “life’s most persistent and urgent question…’What are you doing for others?’”
Yet these two dimensions are incomplete on their own. King sums up his point:
Love yourself, if that means rational and healthy self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget that there is a first and even greater commandment: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” That is the height of life. Only by a painstaking development of all three of these dimensions can you expect to live a complete life.
The beautiful thing – something so perfect that we must, again, see God’s design in it – is that when we love God first, God helps us in the other two dimensions. Remember: we love God because God first loved us. When we love God, we also experience God’s love. Through God’s love for us, we learn to love ourselves. Through God’s love for others, we learn to love others.
As a Beacon would say: “In your light we see light.”
– Pastor Kate
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
