Light in the Darkness

The older I get, the fewer ornaments I put on my Christmas tree. This is in large part due to the fact that many of my ornaments don’t seem to make it intact from one Christmas to the next. Also, though, it has to do with my increasing frustration with clutter, especially Christmas clutter.

Still, my tree is not completely bare. As soon as it goes up, I wrap it in lights which I keep on almost all the time. I know this is dangerous, but I can’t help it. I especially like coming downstairs early in the morning when it is still dark and the whole house is sleeping and looking at the lights. More and more this is what Christmas means to me.

The Christmas story, as told in John, says that what came into being and into our dark world that first Christmas morning was Life; “and that Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.”

Buechner points out that Jesus was born at night, in the dark, because it was easier to see him when the busyness and craziness of the day had ceased. And, he suggests, Jesus still visits most often in the dark times, because it is then when we are most likely to see him: when the ornaments we’ve hung on our lives are not quite so bright; when the clutter we use to make us feel better about this time of year and about ourselves is a mere shadow.

Sitting in the stillness and the dark of my living room what the lights on my tree remind me is this: that Jesus. the Life-Light, came into the darkness, and keeps coming into the darkness, no matter how cluttered and crazy and dangerous it gets.