This little light of mine
Iam writing this from a cozy house deep in the mountains. To my right are Grace and Adelaide. We are huddled on a brown leather couch like three frogs on a log. A rustic Christmas tree, flocked with twigs, antlers, berries, and feathered ornaments, casts a soft glow across the room.
Stella sits in front of me, feet to the fireplace, head leaned back so she can see the Netflix show we are all half-watching. It is something she heard of on TikTok about a girl who moves from NYC to live with parents of nine boys out in the country. It is a reset of sorts after tragedy strikes her family.
This little trip is a reset for us. Some extraordinarily kind friends—familiar with the stresses of divorce—offered their place. It is perfect with its wood and rocks and windows. All is calm; all is bright; like home but not home. Here there are no real responsibilities, no schedules tugging us in different directions, no ghosts.
And we are anonymous in the little town. After hiking out some angst, losing myself in a novel, then sleeping in much longer than usual, I woke this morning to find fog lying over the hills around me like a blanket. I feel insulated by the love of my children and friends.
Last week I went to church. The advent reading was from the gospel of Mark—the first few verses, when John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus, Messiah. The perspective shared by Pastor Brad Elrod, as often happens, was a new one for me. He focused on John’s directive to repent. And instead of the usual “repent means turn away from our sin,” which is one way to interpret it, Brad spoke about “repent” in terms of an invitation to change our point of view.
It is an invitation I want to accept. But how does one change her way of seeing in a world with so much darkness? I am keenly cognizant of the challenge in this gloriously remote spot in the mountains. It is blacker than black when we turn out the lights. Changing points of view in such a place doesn’t seem like a real option. In near-total darkness it feels like an impossibility.
Brad said this season—the time of year we celebrate Jesus’ birth—is the season of the longest nights. He discussed its relationship to the shepherds who watched their flocks by night. But regardless of any spiritual significance, my body knows it’s the darkest season. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, which for someone living year-round with depression and anxiety is a reverse bonus. Poison icing on a rotten cake. The song says it’s the most wonderful time of the year, and Christmas is my favorite holiday. But darkness is difficult, spiritually, physically, in both the literal and figurative senses.
I am reminded of this everywhere I look. In the tired posture and blank eyes of the beggar on the corner in front of Walgreens in Fort Smith. What has to happen in a person’s life to bring them to such a point of darkness? They were once someone’s baby.
In conversations with a friend mourning the death of his wife; the profound void of Christmas without her. My best efforts at comfort seem drops in a bucket as big as a black hole.
Arkansas is Darkansas for so many. It doesn’t have to be that way, but we keep choosing what hurts us. How long, O Lord? I hear creation groaning as ice caps melt. Oceans away, Ukraine faces another winter fighting the evil that is Putin. Gaza burns. My America, country that aspires to be the shining city on a hill, can’t seem to find its way through our dark season, much less light the way for the world.
What John the Baptist called folks to in repentance was a reset— an opportunity to see differently. Maybe this is what many of us need for Christmas. The idea is if we see differently, we do differently. Like Maya Angelou said. And each of us doing differently, little by little, changes the world.
My favorite Christmas carol is “O Holy Night.” There are phrases in it that hit different, as my son says. It occurs to me as I sing it in my head that it contains the whole of my theology, and while I believe the story happened, that’s not the point. Like Genesis—like all stories—what matters is the meaning, how it changes our perspective, and what we do as a result.
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
I have always thought the deepest magic of the Christmas story is that the baby Jesus was born, as Bono said, “In sh*t and straw … a child … unknowable love, unknowable power describes itself as the most vulnerable.” But perhaps it goes a step further to imagine Immanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh, Love incarnate, Love divine—this unknowable power packaged as a baby in poverty—also came in the dead of night. In the darkest season on earth.
That’s when the Light of the World chose to show up. And what he showed us by showing up is our worth. That’s the perspective change John invites us into.
According to Brad, the Tuesday before his sermon recorded the actual earliest sunset, at 4:57 p.m. After that longest night, he said, the light began to grow. The next night the sun set at 4:58. Expanding light is incremental. You can’t tell any difference at first, but every day the light lasts a little longer. Gets a little stronger. That resonates with me in the bleakness and beauty that is winter.
The next verse is the rest of the story. If the what of the Christian story is God is with us, here’s the how: Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.
I think this is the entire point of Christmas. Easter too, for that matter. It is the unmitigated, unadulterated point of being a Christian.
Once the soul really feels its worth, everything changes. We realize the worth within us is also the worth of everyone around us. We have a hope we can offer if we are willing, one little light at a time.