Angled Light

Whenever new people come into a group, I always start with introductions and usually ask people to share something in addition to their name. Recently at Adult Sunday School, I asked the group, “What is your favorite part of this season?” Of course there were many things but by far that which was mentioned most was the lights. I am not a decorator… in general. I do help to put up our Christmas tree, but I refuse to take on outside lights. I enjoyed Bob Wood’s comment in the Sunday School Class that he likes his neighbor’s lights because then he doesn’t have to put them up! And, indeed our neighbor across the street puts up light every year… the day after Thanksgiving!

When it became my turn to share in the Class, I found myself saying that I liked the angle of light during this dark season. I did not think of that ahead of time; it just seemed to come out of me. I was listening to people share about light and maybe it was with my photographer’s eye that I suddenly envisioned the way light cascades across the landscape rather than shine down upon it. It illuminates partially and poignantly; it slips and slides into our lives rather than expose them. When I first said it in the Class I wondered to myself, why hadn’t I said something more religious – I am the pastor, after all. But as I consider it, I see spiritual import. In Advent and Christmas, God doesn’t expose us – doesn’t shine a light on us like the sun in the middle of summer. God’s light comes to us out of the darkness; it touches us incompletely but intensely – like a single candle in the dark.

We do not know when Jesus was born. A popular explanation for the choosing of December 25 is it replaced a mid-winter pagan festival called Saturnalia in the Third Century. That may have been technically true, but the meaning was that Christ is the Light in the Darkness. (I often wonder what Christmas is like in the Southern Hemisphere.)

I do like Christmas tree lights, but I don’t like too much light; I remember going around Anacortes and showing our boys the lights and I always felt unnerved by the houses that had lights on everything. (Remember the house in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas?) Last year we didn’t have a Christmas tree due to my surgery and I’m looking forward to having one again. I like it most when all the other lights in the house are out.

Where do we experience Christ as light in the darkness? How do we feel Christ slipping into our lives, coming into our hearts at an angle? How do we feel Christ like a candle in the dark? P. Jim