Made to Shine | Reflecting Light

article by STARLA GATSON and photography by KELLY MOORE CLARK

April Rodgers’s hand hovered over her computer mouse, hesitant to click “publish” on her first blog post. “It was the very beginning of 2015,” she recalls. “This is when everybody and their sister had a blog. It was completely saturated with every kind of blog that you can think of, and I thought, ‘What in the world am I doing? Only my husband and my mother are going to ever read these things.’” Still, she published her first post anyway, and from there, her life slowly began to change. “The first few blogs were just legitimately terrible. I can’t believe anybody read it or kept reading it, but God is so good and so faithful,” she remembers. 

The little blog she was sure no one would read began to open doors for Rodgers, leading her to pen articles for national Christian bookseller, LifeWay and 90-second devotions for the Hill Radio. All the while, she dreamed of fulfilling an even bigger dream: writing her very own Bible study guide. “That’s where my passion is,” she says of studying scripture. “Jesus got a hold of my heart, and I fell completely in love with Him through reading His word, through Bible study.” 

She was drawn to writing about light, having been inspired by Matthew 5:16, when Jesus told the crowd to “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” And when DaySpring print company caught wind of the devotions and blog posts she had written, Rodgers was sure publishing her Bible study guide was the next step. 

But, Rodgers explains, the Lord — and DaySpring — had other plans. “They said, ‘Let us publish your devotions, then we’ll talk about the Bible study.’ And I kept saying, ‘OK, but I really wish the Bible study would go first.’” But the publishers were adamant, insisting the study guide be put on the backburner. This decision, it turns out, was one of the best things that could have happened for Rodgers’s writing. Her book of devotions, titled Made to Shine: 90 Devotions to Enjoy and Reflect God’s Light, was released May 5th right in the midst of the COVID-induced quarantine, a time when a book of personal devotions was more valuable than a Bible study guide for a group of people. “The Lord knows better than me. Sometimes, I’m hard-headed; He just has to say, ‘Let me just take the wheel; you sit back, and I’ll make it happen.’ It ended up being such a beautiful blessing.” 

The book of devotions is a mixture of anecdotes from Rodgers’s life with her husband and children and spiritual musings about heavier topics like holiness and worth. Being willing to share her story, she says, is what she believes makes her book appealing to others. “I think for women, it has resonated because in there, I try to talk a lot about how you don’t have to have it all together,” she says. “Really, all you have to be willing to do is tell your story because your story is different from my story, and her story’s going to be different than your story, but if we all start to tell our stories about how He has been faithful to us and how He has changed our lives, then it shifts everything.” 

Telling your story, Rodgers says, is key to reflecting the light she’s so deeply passionate about. “More and more people will want to have that light. They’ll want to know, ‘What is it about her that I’m so attracted to? Why do I really want to sit down with her, and why do I really want to have a conversation with her?’ They don’t even know, but it’s because the light is shining out of you.” 

Rodgers tells her story through her devotions and blog through Reflecting Light, a ministry she began while studying at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. “When I went to seminary, I wanted to do Reflecting Light ministries. I saw it kind of like Priscilla Shirer has her ministry; she’s able to write the Bible studies and then do it, but she isn’t necessarily working in the church.” Yet again, God had other plans for Rodgers. While on a trip to Israel, she received a call from staff pastors at Christ Church, offering her a position as Director of Women’s Ministry for all three campuses. Instead of giving an immediate answer, though, she asked for time to pray on it; she wanted to be certain the opening at the church was a space God wanted her to fill. 

“I was coming back home, and I was telling the Lord, ‘I’m about to be in JFK, and I haven’t heard from you about if you want me to do this or not,’” she recalls. “I was listening to this beautiful song, and this girl was singing in the background, but it wasn’t just her that was making the song so pretty. It was other people around that were participating — the musicians, the drummer, the piano player, all the different people — and I felt like the Lord was just saying, ‘You’ve been out here doing this on your own for so long. Do it with other like-minded people. Do it with people that I can surround you with, and you can love on the women. That’s what you’re good at; that’s what you love to do.’ And so, I said OK. I went for my first day of work, and then the next day, everything got shut down because of COVID.”

Now, with a bit of normalcy restored, Rodgers has reported back to work and has hit the ground running with the introduction of “Women On Mission” at Christ Church. She hopes to encourage women to positively impact their spheres of influence for the cause of Christ, whether they are in their homes, at work, or out and about in the community. 

Her passion is evident in both her writing and ministry and though she seems to have hit her stride now, Rodgers says she never saw herself becoming an author or women’s minister. In fact, until the tragic death of her brother, the Monroe native had been completely certain she would work as a financial planner until she retired. “I was being groomed to be a financial planner ever since I was young; my dad was in the business, so it was just kind of understood that was the path I was going to go down,” she explains. “So, I went to school, majored in marketing, and I got my certified financial planner degree.” But after losing her brother so abruptly, Rodgers says she began to shift her thought process to a more eternal mindset. “I started to think about things like, ‘OK, what do you want me to do, Lord?’” 

She continued her career in financial planning, all the while pondering the possibility of switching occupational gears and battling infertility. After three years, Rodgers gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Addie, and after every door for childcare slammed shut, she found herself stepping out of the world of financial planning and into the role of a stay-at-home mom. “I said, ‘Now what, Lord?’ And it was then that my love for Bible study sparked and ignited, and I started teaching Bible study at my church and just never stopped, really,” she says. “We ended up having another daughter a few years later, and when I knew Addie and Ella were going to be going to school full-time, I had this decision to make: am I going to go back into financial planning, or going to seminary?” 

The two options could not have been more different, Rodgers knew, but after spending time in prayer and a long conversation with her husband, she made the bold decision to pursue a Master’s degree in theological studies. It was a leap of faith for sure, but faith, Rodgers says, is foot action. “It’s just putting one foot in front of the other,” she explains. “I love a good plan, and the Lord and I have this conversation quite frequently where I’ll tell Him, ‘I’ll follow you. I’ll do whatever you say to do; just tell me where we’re going.’ And He’s saying, ‘Just trust me.’”

Rodgers believes the Lord has shown Himself faithful in her life over and over again, and she encourages any woman wrestling with uncertainty or hardship to draw closer to God and intentionally keep moving forward. “At the time, I thought, ‘What is the purpose in all this?’” she says of her past hardships. “And now when I look back on it, I see that He was so faithful. He was so faithful to me in the season of loss. He was so faithful to me in the season of infertility. He was so faithful to me on the mountaintop whenever He gave me a book contract. He’s worth us putting our trust in.” It’s not always easy, she warns, but if you walk with the Lord, He will illuminate every step of the path.

And that’s exactly what Rodgers intends to continue doing: trusting in God’s faithfulness and reflecting His light brightly for all to see.