The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….
Just after Christmas Day I stopped by a small local store. I hadn’t been there for a while. As there were no other customers in the store at that moment, I chatted with one of the clerks and I asked him: “How’s business?”
“Well, Christmas is over. I guess we’ll be OK.”
He was speaking of reality and survival — survival of the store, survival of his finances. Christmas makes the difference.
I was puzzled. I thought his experience of Christmas and my experience of Christmas were different — and, of course, that mine was better. I had just listened to the Service of Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, England. As I had listened to the music and the readings I remembered my own childhood when Christmas was full of mystery and quiet wonder and when I always woke up to a new hope. That hope and wonder may have had more to do with all the new Christmas toys than with anything else, but it was real! and that hope and wonder is still alive.
It may be easy to dismiss the brightness of Christmas, but the adoration of the Christ Child at King’s College was lovely and brought back the memories and brought back the vision of the child within me. I was renewed. Life was better. Light does shine in the darkness.
That light illuminates both the challenges ahead and their resolutions. With each resolution I come upon the next challenge. And so it goes all along the way.
What I see and where I go depend on who I meet, who I am, how I have grown, and where I want to go in the first place. As I grow, my thinking grows. As I learn, I see differently. I see different obstacles and different opportunities. That Light lights up the world I live in.
I wonder, as I wander, why Jesus was born for to die…
That bright Light of Christmas survived darkness. Wise Men, twelve days later, from outside that faith and culture, understood. Gold, of course, for The King. Frankincense, yes: denoting holiness of time and place. But, Myrrh? For death? This is supposed to be a festival — a Happy Birth — a jolly, jolly Christmas. At the Epiphany, though, the roots of that joy already are known.
Survival on the journey, requires a dependable light. I might well rage against the dying of the light, because without light I am nowhere and nothing. But the Light of Christmas shines brightly still. It can be recognized by a child and it shines from within.
And makes all things new.
Always.