“Let there be light!”
“A light bulb changes an environment simply by its mere presence.”
“See how a candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
Three quotes about light one can find through a swift search on the internet. The first one, we will return to, but the third I’d like to focus on for a moment. As I write this, we are quieting our homes from the Christmas decorations, the new gifts, packing away the stockings as well as my belongings to make the drive back from Texas to Mississippi. It makes me think about all the candles and Christmas lights I come to adore during the holiday season. As we fill our homes with extra light, there is a small sadness putting away the decorations to see a slightly dimmer home. This third quote was written in a diary by a Jewish, adolescent girl during the Holocaust. Anne Frank wrote these words in one of the darkest moments in history.
“See how a candle can both defy and define the darkness”
We love to celebrate Christmas here in the south, buying and wrapping gifts, all the shopping, the wishes for a white christmas! But Christmas is so much more than all of this. It’s about darkness, and people wandering around, unable to see or save themselves.
If I were to wander about in a cave for hours with only my phone flashlight on 30%, what do you think would eventually happen?? There is no way I could, in my own power, create or bring light so I could see. Jesus came to do what we could not and cannot do on our own. He came to not only illuminate our path to the Father, but also to BE our path to the Father. He didn’t just hand us a flashlight and point us in the general direction, He is the Light.
I don’t know if it was just our family that did this, but my brothers and I always had a challenge on road trips. When going through tunnels we would attempt to hold our breath until we reached the other side! (Totally dangerous now that I think of it, but this was before IPhones so what else were we supposed to do?) I remember sitting in the middle seat wriggling in anticipation for the light to grow at the end of the tunnel so I could finally take a deep breath. This is where the story of Christmas begins. Not just with a king born in a manger in Bethlehem, but with years and years of longing and aching darkness.
“The people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.”
Back to our candle quote for a moment. Jesus not only pierced through the darkness, he defined it. Since Genesis 1 He has been separating darkness from the light. When light sends the darkness shrinking back, it reveals hidden realities that were unseen before. Darkness is illuminated and exposed by light. Jesus revealed the power and presence of God to a people who had only seen His glory dimly.
So why am I sharing this after Christmas? Because I don’t think our lights have to dim when the month changes and we transition into a new year. Another thing about light I love? Darkness cannot enter light, but just the opposite. If I open a door from a dark room to a room with light, the darkness won’t spill in and make it harder to see, but just the opposite! The light will even spread to the room that was dark without its light even dimming.
I think it’s important for each one of us to remember, as we put away the Christmas tree and get ready to go back to “ordinary life,” that we also get to be light. Our invitation today is to accept this light of heaven. His light enters our human hearts, “dear Christ enters in.” So we become a candle, like the tender tradition of a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. We are the light IN the world to reflect Christ. We both defy and define the darkness.
To finish, light also has an element of warmth as well as illumination. The stronger the light and the closer you are, the more heat radiates upon you. Warmth gathers us in close and tucks us in, it’s a comfort. Others are drawn to the warmth and then changed, not by our traditions or gorgeous decor, but by Jesus, the only true way and the only everlasting light.