This Little Light of Mine

In Which I Share Thoughts Sparked by Christmas Lights

Driving around on dark December nights admiring the lights is a much loved Christmas-tide pastime, especially in the northern hemisphere where night falls earlier and earlier with each passing day leading up to the winter solstice. The lights shine out in the darkness and illumine the spaces around them brilliantly, beautifully, and we take joy in their sparkling luminescence.

But during the day the lights themselves are hardly noticeable except as a mass of cords stretching across the edges of roofs and zig-zagging through yards and up trees. Even if they are switched on the light can’t be seen in the presence of the much greater light of day. The bright and beautiful glow that shines in the darkness is swallowed up by the overwhelmingly great light of the sun, even on a cloudy day.

This brings to mind a pattern that I’ve noticed as I’ve watched my children grow and develop and mature over the years. The lesser is always giving way to the greater as I guide them, training them up in the way they should go. Baby coos and giggles give way to first words, which give way to toddler speech, which gives way to fluent communication. Each successive milestone shines a greater light into the darkness so to speak, eclipsing that which came before.

This pattern of the lesser making way for the greater is one that all of us are meant to follow throughout our lives. Each step we take builds on all the prior steps taken and our best, most complete self emerges, slowly, sometimes painfully, and certainly not always in a linear fashion. But growth and change are inevitable from beginning to end, and we are called, as it says in Way of the Ascetics, to begin now, but with eternity before our eyes.

Sometimes the growing pains that accompany this giving way seem to be more than we can bear. The transitions are not always smooth, and we often long for what used to be, not only because it was more comfortable, but also because of the joy that we took in each of those earlier stages.

Whether we consider such changes to be fortunate or unfortunate, the inexorable passage of time pulls us along and we find that our brightest achievements are continually outshone by brighter ones, which is as it should be. And yet the greater lights would not be possible without the smaller ones that paved the way for them to shine.

Patterns such as this are hidden all over the place, quietly working out their ways whether we see them or not, but when we do notice them suddenly we start to see them everywhere, writ large or small, and we find that the light which illumines our own path has become brighter once again.

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory…” (2 Corinthians 3:18)