Shine Your Light

Questions press the listener in the first verse of "Shine Your Light": "Tell me why you got your secret locked inside? Why you trying to keep it for your own?" Nichole Nordeman adds one from Jesus' teaching, "if he asks for bread, tell me why, why you giving him a stone," which comes from Matthew 7:9.

The "secret" is hope. "The reason for the hope that burns your soul, the reason that you're sleeping peacefully, wasn't meant to be undisclosed," she sings, a close echo of 1 Peter 3:15 on being ready to give a reason for hope. The sharing is meant to be generous, since the verse says "go and bring them water from a different well."

The chorus uses the image of Matthew 5:14, "when you live in a city on a hill, you've got to shine your light," repeated as a rule rather than a suggestion. A bridge describes "running with your candle into blackest night, to be salt and light to the wide, wide world," drawing on Matthew 5:13, and ends with the observation that "your heart is filled with wonder, your cup is running over still."