The dark lets us see The Light clearer...

As the midnight service ended tonight, my thoughts were drawn to my friends who lost an infant daughter this last Sunday, and the words "sleep in heavenly peace" took on a different meaning.

My thoughts are with children this year. A new baby in our family, the loss of a baby, the hand motions that I did in preschool to "Away in a Manger" that I pictured tonight--and had to stop myself from doing---tonight as we sang the same carol. There's a lovely one about the animals coming to worship the Baby Jesus that I miss singing. Christmas is always a time of awareness of life and death, of the ups and downs of the year, of the yin and yang of existence.

How amazing that GOD decided to become a man, to grow as a child, to suffer the hurts of teenage years, only to die on a cross for our sins. I think he had tried to bring the Word to us in so many ways and so many times, that he finally just decided that He had to come in ALL HIS GLORY--every little bit of it. That much soul must have burned through that body...How hard it must have been for Him not to just shake his children and say, "Don't you get it!!!!!!" But He didn't, he showed us how to LOVE HIM--by loving Himself so much that He was willing to follow the plan even when His human mind faltered. I believe that when Jesus says, "I am THE TRUTH, THE WAY, and THE LIGHT" that He means that HE is God's Love Incarnate. All of God's Love stuffed into a poor human body. He must have spent so many nights crying for the sin around Him, for the suffering He saw.

I love to sit in the dark with only the Christmas lights on. Tonight as we did the candlelight singing, I was struck how much more the altar candles shone, how the trees popped, and the lighted angel trumpeting stood out against the darkened wall. The minister had told of his grandfather dying of a heart attack on Christmas Eve, and how the Christmas story meets us where we are with a message of peace.

Yet in our minds, we reject the dark and want Christmas to be only of light; it needs to be perfect--NOT. It is in embracing the imperfection of this world that we are able to truly appreciate the arrival of Light.

So in the days between now and Epiphany, find some time to sit in the dark, embrace the dark, and ask the Light to come into the darkest corners of your life, then turn to your Christmas lights and accept that you are worthy of His Love.

And sing Hallelujah for His Grace.

Meaningful Christmas to all, and to all a good night.