“Just
leave the Christmas decorations up a few more days,” Jerry said after
Christmas.
No issues with me. He’d forgotten that I don’t even think about getting them all down until Epiphany, which is today, the day we traditionally celebrate as the time when the star following magi arrived to see the baby Jesus. It is considered a season of light.
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| Image credit: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope |
But we’ve been ablaze around here for some time. I’m a lover of timed candles and light strings, and I’ve figured a way to incorporate them in almost every room. So, from mid-November until early January, when dusk comes on, almost every room in my house is glowing. Eveready should pay me a commission for all the batteries I go through this time of year.
I
think Jerry has come to love the flickering bulbs as much as me.
The
lights are a reminder of The Light. From the time I fully surrendered my life
to the Lord until now, I’ve been a lover of light. In those early days, it was
as if I didn’t know how dark it was until the light of Jesus came in and
illuminated my life.
I
was recently sharing this example of what I mean—when we drop something small
on the floor like a button here, we’ll often get a flashlight and shine across the
floor to find it. When we do, we are horrified to see the fur accumulation from
our beloved Lucy dog. You can’t have a seventy-five-pound dog in the house
without shedding, and though I’m on my fourth robot vacuum cleaner, it’s hard
to stay ahead of the fur factor. But until we get that flashlight out, we are
ignorant or maybe we just don’t want to acknowledge our situation.
It's
like that with God’s light. I tried to ignore the darkness in my life, but when
the light came, I could no longer do so. It’s as if a spotlight hit all the
dark corners.
The
song about the wise men goes, “Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal
beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect
light.”
Jesus
came to reveal God’s perfect light. The apostle John wrote about this light in
I John 1 and 2, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” and “ … the
darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”
So
today, let’s allow the light that is Jesus to reveal all the dark places in us,
clean us up through repentance and forgiveness, and set us on a new path in
this new year.
And
as a continuing reminder, after Epiphany, I’m figuring out a way to keep a few of
these timed candles here and there. Just got to have the light.