“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16).
I had never given much thought about Jesus's specific use of a bushel as an example of what not to do with the light we are given, other than it being some kind of basket that would be effective at blocking out the light. But I believe there are some very important reasons why Jesus chose to talk about putting our light in a bushel. Whether we look at the term bushel in the English translation, or the term modius, as used in the original Greek, both bushel and modius have two meanings. A bushel is both a basket designed to store things like grain and also a unit of measurement. The two meanings of bushel represent two major temptations that confront us when our Heavenly Father gives us light to share with the world.
When we have felt the disorientation and unease and terror at being plunged into complete darkness, it is perfectly natural to develop an intense desire to never again be subject to such a dreadful experience. We may be tempted to take every possible precaution to prevent the darkness from ever swallowing us up again. If we are in such a mindset, then it makes perfect sense to take every flicker of light that we are blessed with and shove it into our bushel to keep it safe and secure and ready to be pulled out to defeat the darkness when it comes for us once again.
But such efforts are entirely self-defeating. For one thing, light is a living, breathing thing. If you put a candle under a bushel or lock up fireflies in an airtight jar, the lack of air is going to suffocate the candle or the fireflies, and by the time that you really need the light because the darkness outside has become complete, all of that hordes light will have perished and the project of keeping light safe in the bushel will have failed utterly.
For another thing, trying to keep our light secret and safe will only hasten the total darkness from overtaking us. Imagine that we have a lamp stored under our bushel that has not yet gone out, and we pass by dozens of people who all have lamps full of oil with wicks properly trimmed but no way to light their lamps. We could try to justify to ourselves that we have to keep the light for ourselves to take care of our own needs and so we must ignore their pleas and pass by on the other side and hurry on our way to try and outrun the darkness. But what would happen instead if we got rid of the bushel and went from person to person helping them light their own lamps? A lot of things could happen to snuff out our own light, even temporarily. But if we have surrounded ourselves with dozens of people, each with their own lights to shine, then even when our own light goes out, the total darkness can't come for us because we have chosen to protect our light not by cramming it into a suffocating bushel, but by storing it in the lamps of all of those around us.
But there's a second danger that can come from trying to use a bushel for the light and receive. As we went over above, a bushel is a unit of measurement. It does us no good at all to concern ourselves with whether our light measures up to anyone else's, or even to some hypothetical ideal. The important thing about the light that we have been given is that we may let it shine out to the world, not so people can see how brilliant we are in comparison to anyone else, but so they may see our good works and glorify God. Whether we've been given a stubby little half-used candle or some magnificently radiant crystal chandelier does not matter so long as we share our light with the pure love of Christ in our hearts. If we keep dumping all of our light into the bushel to make sure that we fill it up to the top, we will never be satisfied. We can't fill up the bushel with light because light isn't like grain or flour that we can scoop up and measure.
Christ has promised us that if we will put our trust in Him, we will always have Him and His light to be with us. We don't need to hoard our light, or measure it to make sure we have enough. If the flame of our candle goes out, or the fuel in our lamps runs out, or we lose our light source altogether, or the very jaws of Hell seek to swallow us whole, Christ will go before us to light our way. He will deal with the darkness, we need to simply focus on sharing our light as often and with as many people as we possibly can.
