We can all rejoice that God is the God of light and that his Son Jesus is the Light of the World and the glorious fulfillment of Day One of Genesis. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:4-5).

Human beings have a natural love for light. It is no wonder, for light and all it represents was the very first thing that God introduced into his creation.
The first two verses of the Bible proclaim,

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Gen. 1:1-2)

Creation was a structureless, lifeless, lightless, and watery chaos. And the Spirit of God hovered like a mother bird over the chaos. He loved the chaos, cared for the chaos, and was about to develop the chaos over a period of six days. Remember that we shouldn’t, strictly speaking, talk of “six days of creation,” for creation was achieved in a moment. Rather, Genesis 1 describes six days of God enlightening, ordering, filling, and enlivening his creation. This is day one:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning—the first day (Gen. 1:3-5).

1. God spoke light into existence.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3). Witness first the power of God: he speaks, things happen. In other words, what God wills happens. As Basil of Caesarea explained in his sermons on Genesis 1: “The divine will and the first impetus of divine intelligence are the Word of God.”
What happens, happens because God wills it to happen. There is no higher will than God’s, there is no will strong enough to compete with God, and there is no realm where God is not present and where his will does not rule. This is the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and it is inherent in the word “God.”  God by definition is the eternal being whose will reigns supreme and unchallenged. Thus, we call God “Lord” or “The Lord Almighty” or “King of kings and Lord of lords.”
In the Greek Pantheon, each god competes with the others. Even Zeus—king of Olympus—is outwitted and manipulated and frustrated by the mischievous wills of both gods and men. Elohim is not at all like this. He rules, full stop.
Note especially the power of God’s words. For Paul, this underpins the gospel mission. The gospel is God’s Word, so it is inherently powerful. Mighty Rome might find it pathetically weak, and the philosophers might find it grotesquely foolish—but even the “foolishness” of God is wiser and mightier than the power and wisdom of humanity (1 Cor. 1:18-25). And when God speaks directly to the human heart and spirit, his word is invincible (2 Cor. 4:6).
2. Light is a marvelous thing.
For starters, light is very quick, moving just shy of 300,000 kilometers per second. If you drove your car to the sun at 110km/h (the speed limit) it would take you 157 years to arrive. But if you could ride a beam of light to the sun, it would take you only eight minutes and twenty seconds. I am always delighted by the thought that when I look up at the stars, not only do I see a glorious picture of the number of Abraham’s descendants, I see also the distant past, the light of far distant stars and galaxies that may have taken thousands of years to reach me.
Our amazing scientists still do not wholly grasp the paradoxical nature of light. Physicists talk about “wave-particle duality,” or a “duality paradox”; for on the one hand light behaves like waves and has frequency and amplitude, but it also behaves like particles that can be amassed and focused into a laser beam that can cut through steel. The Jedi knight’s brilliant light sabre might be mythical, but the sheer awesome potential of light is not. These two distinct properties of light have not yet been harmonized. Albert Einstein said,

It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. (The Evolution of Physics, p. 278)

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There will be those who will insist on their view, or their accusations, irrespective of what the overwhelming majority of the church think. But in the end, we have to let go of our reputations. Ultimately, it is not before every accuser that we stand or fall, it is the judgement of Jesus that really matters. We cannot be in ministry and avoid accusations and, often, we will not find that we are ultimately able to make ourselves fully understood. Sometimes people will think badly of us and we will not be able to do anything about it. 

Everybody wants a good reputation. Nobody enjoys people speaking ill of them. And let’s face it, the Lord Jesus expects elders in his church to be ‘thought well of by outsiders’ (1 Timothy 3:7) and ‘beyond reproach’ (Titus 1:7). Reputation matters.
Of course, that doesn’t mean an elder must be universally liked. As Kevin DeYoung helpfully explains here:
If [outsiders] think my blog is whack, my views are repulsive, and they believe all kinds of nasty things about me (which I hope they don’t, and I think they don’t), that would not mean I have fallen foul of 1 Timothy 3:7. If, however, most of the outsiders who know me from school or from the restaurant or from the pool know me to be rude, untrustworthy, undependable, and hypocritical, then my church should take notice. The key, I think, is that even if a pastor cannot have a good reputation with outsiders everywhere (probably impossible for anyone with more than a handful of Twitter followers), he should be respected (even begrudgingly) by the outsiders who see him up close.
He argues the same is broadly true within the church too:
If the requirement to be “above reproach” focuses on the discernment of the local believers, the qualification to “be well thought of by outsiders” concerns the wider non-believing community. Again, knowing what we do about Jesus’ public ministry, the requirement must not be pressed to mean that the elder must be universally beloved by the unregenerate world. Rather, the issue for us, as it was for Ephesus, is that “the leadership of the church should bring no unnecessary disrepute upon the church through improper and immoral actions” (Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 183).
Whenever people make accusations against elders, the reality is that these things need to be weighed and judged by the church. Independency demands that these things are not outsourced to others, but ought to be weighed and judged by the church, within the church itself. Being above reproach and well thought of by outsiders i.e. not a hypocrite is judged by the church itself.
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She fully embraced the Reformed and Presbyterian faith as described in the Westminster standards. She would never burden others that they must because she did – but that she did isn’t really a question. She was of the old, rugged faith. She never felt the need to pressure anyone in regard to matters of faith but she also didn’t have a great deal of patience for cute or pop cultural theological moods. This was part of her strength.

As to Raquel Welch, thank you for your many condolences.
She was a wonderful lady and a fine Christian. The children have taken it a bit hard as they have many fond memories. I’ll tell you a few things the usual sources won’t tell you.
First, she was a serious Christian and church member. Many people (maybe most people) do things when they’re young or make decisions they think better of later in life. Because she did also she had great grace and understanding for every person. This is a great testimony of her hope in Christ.
She had no reason for games or play at the faith and she took her religion seriously. We had deep talks about theology historical and theoretical and she embraced both with care and study.
As with many, her faith grew more serious and practical with age. It’s often true that the most important things become the most important to us as we’ve matured personally. That’s just to say that spiritual and personal maturity are often coincident age and life experience.
Second, she fully embraced the Reformed and Presbyterian faith as described in the Westminster standards. She would never burden others that they must because she did – but that she did isn’t really a question. She was of the old, rugged faith. She never felt the need to pressure anyone in regard to matters of faith but she also didn’t have a great deal of patience for cute or pop cultural theological moods. This was part of her strength.
Third, she was just another lady of the church. She didn’t put on airs or expect special attention (although she could hardly avoid even with the best of intentions being the most glamorous person in the room). And she often advised churches and ministries on practical and business matters because she was brilliant in those things. You didn’t think she survived and thrived 60+ years in the public eye by just being a pretty face?
Fourth, she often attributed the revitalization of her faith to others with whom she had to do including other conservative Presbyterians Jimmy Stewart, Ron Reagan and Chuck Heston.
Fifth, she thought of the Reformed faith as the faith of her family, parents and ancestors and the one that was deep enough and strong enough to carry a person through a difficult and painful life.
Because of her peculiar life and the experiences that come with that she didn’t trust many people. When everyone wants to be your friend it’s hard to have any.
Still she was our friend and a delightful lady full of grace, wisdom and good humor. She loved our children and there’s no greater testimony of care and true concern than that.
We will miss her.
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