"Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, 'children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.'  Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky" (2:14-15, NIV).

Today, I'm not going to grumble about grumbling.  I'm not even interested in defining Paul's evocative phrase, "warped and crooked generation."  Suffice it to say the world can be a brutish and ugly place, and people can do to each other-and to the world around them and to themselves-lots of things they shouldn't do.  I think we can agree on that.

No, it's easy enough to point out ugliness.  Instead, I want to focus on a more lovely description Paul offers, a description-lo and behold-of US.  As we grow in Christ, he says, we will "shine among [the aforementioned warped and crooked generation] like stars in the sky.  Whoa.  Linger over those words for a minute.

Listen to Paul, kid, and you'll go far.  You'll be a star-and not in the 15-minute Warholesque sense of fame or even as a viral phenomenon for ranting about the aforementioned warped and crooked generation or maybe killing a giant hog or something.  No, Paul wants you to shine like a star in this world, and all that takes is a willingness to let a light greater than your own shine through you.

That light, of course, is Christ, whose words and actions glow with love, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, grace, and compassion.

Now, getting back to our Philippian verses, I will say it's difficult to let Christ's light shine through us while we're grumbling or arguing.  In fact, I'm not sure there's an easier way to blend into the crowd these days than grumbling about or arguing with the rest of the crowd.

No, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you'll spend less time drawing lines in the sand and more time bringing people together; you'll offer to the stranger a smile instead of a scowl; you'll hurt with those who hurt and rejoice with those who rejoice; you'll partner with others to magnify Christ's light; and you'll take time to worship the true source of that light.  In short, you'll bask in and shine with faith, hope, and love.

And here is why we can dare to let that light shine through us when others keep calling us to the shadows: We know the love that never ends; we know how this whole big messy-strange-beautiful-frightening story called life comes out.

[SPOILER ALERT]

God wins.