There’s cur­rent­ly a pret­ty inter­est­ing Face­book dis­cus­sion on “mea­sure of light.” Col­lo­qui­al­ly, I’ve heard this phrase used as a way to reas­sure us that we don’t all have to have the same abil­i­ties. We should­n’t be jeal­ous of oth­ers, who might have oth­er tal­ents in the body of Christ. Our goal is to live up to the light of what we’ve each been giv­en as individuals. 

Read­ing Robert Bar­clay, where much of this lan­guage comes from, I’m not sure he would agree: 

By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, where­with we say every man is enlight­ened, and hath a mea­sure of it, which strives with them in order to save them, and which may, by the stub­born­ness and wicked­ness of man’s will, be quenched, bruised, wound­ed, pressed down, slain and cru­ci­fied; we under­stand not the prop­er essence and nature of God, pre­cise­ly tak­en, which is not divis­i­ble into parts and mea­sures, as being a most pure, sim­ple being, void of all com­po­si­tion or divi­sion, and there­fore can nei­ther be resist­ed, hurt, wound­ed, cru­ci­fied, or slain by all the efforts and strength of men.

An Apol­o­gy for the True Chris­t­ian Divin­i­ty. Robert Bar­clay, 1678

He’s pret­ty clear that the light is indi­vis­i­ble so I don’t see how it could be more or less with­in any of us or change over time (though cer­tain­ly our aware­ness of it can be strength­ened as we progress spir­i­tu­al­ly). And for him, and all ear­ly Quak­ers, the Light was very def­i­nite­ly God work­ing with­in us. Nowa­days it’s more com­mon for Lib­er­al Friends to think of it as a kind of spir­i­tu­al conscience.

I myself wouldn’t want to get into decid­ing who has what abil­i­ty. Maybe tal­ents is a bet­ter way of think­ing about it. Like, in my human­ness I may get jeal­ous that some­one gives real­ly good min­istry in wor­ship. But maybe that’s not my gift. There are some peo­ple I’ve met who are always extreme­ly thought­ful of oth­ers. And oth­ers who are real­ly good at cen­ter­ing a group down in wor­ship. I have friends who are always great about get­ting to know every­one in their lives. We can aspire to be bet­ter in all these things but there are peo­ple who seem more nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to this. So we should try to live up to our mea­sure in our spir­i­tu­al lives but not feel bad about our­selves if oth­ers are able to do cer­tain things effortlessly.