let there be light
Some say these are dark times.
Winter breathes frosty paralysis in beautiful, sparkling gusts, and, especially because of the bare chill, the cloud-blanketed skies, I want to stay inside. And yet, this time of year, I feel starved for light. I hang strings of white bulbs, twinkling, in every room. I flick on all the lamps. I look at the fire, those wild, dancing flames, and give thanks for light, for warmth. Oh, but let me be a light, I pray. Let me be warmth in bitter seasons.
I think of Adam, who must always sleep with one light on, who leaves his overhead light burning bright like a sun all day in his room, even when he’s downstairs. In other seasons, I turn off his light when I walk by the room. He seems to sense this from downstairs; he runs up, passing me in the hall, just to flip the switch back on. He stops and looks at me, his fingers stilled over the switch. He makes me smile, reminding me that the priests in God’s tabernacle kept oil lamps always burning (they were commanded never to run out of oil), even through the night; that in His parables, Jesus also warned his followers to “keep your lamps burning,” being ready to serve; that Biblically, the snuffing of lamps signifies spiritual death. In Winter, I stop my hand, flatten my fingers against the switch in Adam’s room, tapping the wall as I pause in his doorway. In Winter, I understand.
In the early afternoon, I find a box on our front porch. Wrapped in silver paper, the package glints in my hands. Even with all the clouds, the gift is somehow radiant. Someone has taped a greeting card to the top, labeled with our names in careful black script. The bend and curl of those lines seem unfamiliar, new, the ink still fresh. I gaze up at the tree by which I measure seasons, tracing its strong, naked limbs up to the sky. They reach like empty hands, humble for filling, their bark wet and dark. In this barren season, someone has filled my hands.
God has a compulsion for filling the empty, for lighting the dark.
I take the package inside, close the door against the cold. Inside the card, my neighbor has written, “Though the years pass, we remain, committed and caring for each other.” We remain, like lamps always burning. The front of the card beams with candlelight, and in the box, I unwrap from crinkly cellophane three electric candles, the kind that burn but don’t burn up–like the bush set on fire by God himself. A week past Christmas and my neighbor puts light in my hands; and I think maybe this is what God always intended that we do for each other. We’re living, breathing moons.
There is light that remains all Winter; there is light that never fades. While outwardly we waste away–though the years pass, as my neighbor writes—that light matures. Jesus, the great light that dawned into our darkness, obliterates even the shadow of death. One lamp never goes out. It was this that God foreshadowed even in those days of creation, when first He created light, when he set governing lights in the heavens: God is always and God is light; in him there is no darkness. So this longing I have for light; it can only be another pang of a much greater hunger.
The candles have little sculpted flames that dance as though flickering in the wind. I turn them on, thinking of and repeating my prayer: Oh, let me be a light. So many times, God promises to make us shine. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Daniel, “Men and women who have lived wisely and well will shine brilliantly, like the cloudless, star-strewn night skies. And those who put others on the right path to life will glow like stars forever (Daniel 12:7).” Jesus himself said, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43).” In Philippians, Paul wrote that those who live without grumbling and complaining will “shine like stars in the sky (Philippians 2:15).” If God is light, beneath all of these promises rests the solid thread of another: God redeems us to be as He made us to be, in His image.
Shine on, little moon, that they may praise your Father in heaven.
***
Happy New Year, loved ones! I hope you start this fresh, new year holding light in your hands and in your heart. You were made for greater things, for Kingdom life. You are dearly, deeply loved by God. Know that today, I give thanks to God above that for the gift of you and that we get to start the new year together! Thank you for bringing light to me.
May God’s praises rise in 2021!
