...straw against the chill

There within a stable, the baby drew a breath
There began a life that put an end to death.
And in the frozen stillness, a mighty voice is heard:
"God is here among you! Human is the Word!"
It was so long ago, but we remember still:
Star upon the snow, straw against the chill.
A planet dancing slow, a tree upon a hill,
Star upon the snow, straw against the chill.
---Bob Franke

Emmanuel. God with us. Here. Now. All the straw we'll ever need against all the chill we'll ever encounter.

...the dark light

We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward 
The blessed light that yet to us is dark.
---Wendell Berry, 1999

I was sun-blind. Could not see anything ahead, not road, nor obstacle, nor turn. Unsure of what step to take next, whether to step at all, paralyzed with the blind fear of it.

Then I looked back. Not a long look, a stare. Not a longing gaze, cast with an eye to return. Just a look. And that look made me sure again---it reassured me.

Even when light hid light from my clear view, I was being led, guided; a path was being made. So, though I did not see, I stepped into the light.

It had led me before.

...renewed for glory

You come, O Lord, with gladness, in mercy and goodwill,
 to bring an end to sadness and bid our fears be still.
In patient expectation we live for that great day
when your renewed creation your glory shall display.
---Paul Gerhardt, 1653

We are used, I think, to the idea of waiting on God to reveal Godself in the world. The thought of that kind of waiting is like slipping on a pair of old, comfortable blue jeans---worn smooth, weathered and stressed in the very spots that your body bends and stretches, faded and sun-bleached. Reassuring, comforting---no surprises with this pair of jeans. Waiting on God is what we are used to.

What if we found out, all this time, we should have been waiting for something else? Not as in something different, but something in addition to? What if, maybe, God has had something else in mind for the revealing?

What if God's glory is to be revealed, not just to us...but in us? 

What if, while we have been waiting on God, God has been...waiting...on us?

What if we are being renewed for the express purpose of revealing the glory of God in our world?

...the present instant

No wind at the window, no knock on the door;
no light from the lampstand, no foot on the floor;
no dream born of tiredness, no ghost raised by fear:
just an angel and a woman and a voice in her ear.
---John L. Bell, 1992

You just had to be there. Sometimes experience is gold. That instant when Mary understood...something...happened because she was present, in that moment, open to that experience. She heard...something...because she was listening, ready for the whisper of the messenger-voice.

The world...changed...because Mary was really there.

What voice might we catch, what message might we intuit, were we to be fully present to life, in all its messy moments?

How might the world change if we were to really listen?

...pass-along glory

Arise, your light is come! The Spirit’s call obey;

show forth the glory of your God, which shines on you today.

Arise, your light is come! Fling wide the prison door;

proclaim the captive’s liberty, good tidings to the poor.

---Ruth Duck, 1974

We are so used to hearing the themes of Advent and Christmastide that they ring almost common in our ears, feel a bit bland rolling off our tongues…Light! Glory! Good tidings! When I stop and think about these things, they make me glad --- I need some good tidings, and some light, and a little glory to shine down on me! Yay, me!

Then hymnist Ruth Duck uses the prophet’s message from Isaiah to call my attention back to intention. Yes, some of that God-glory falls on me...but not to soak up and store. That glory, that light, those are pass-along gifts from a God who has called us as co-laborers in the life-work of lifting, reviving, nurturing, and restoring. These gifts? They were never meant for me, for us, to get and keep. This glory, this light, has always been destined for community.

And those, my friends, are mighty good tidings.

...with the dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness---
Being walkers with the sun and morning.
---Langston Hughes

The easiest person to be is yourself. The most comfortable skin to live in is your own. The easiest nature to seek out is your true nature. Being who we are should not be tough; it should be---well, second nature. 

In Langston Hughes' minimalist masterpiece Walkers with the Dawn, the American 20th-century poet emphasized the embrace of one's true nature. Because Hughes' people are dawn walkers, because they walk with the sun, they do not fear the night, nor dark days, nor clouded times. It is not because those times of darkness, or shadow, or unseeing, are not real---or really daunting.

But dawn walkers have it in their nature to know that light is there---behind the gloom, or after it. The nature of Hughes' people was to seek the sun. This was no extraordinary feat---it was in their nature.

As children of God, our nature is to be people of hope. By walking in hope we do not deny the tough times, or refuse to take a path that leads through them. But our nature is to abide in the hope, not the shadow. It is who we are.

...you've gotta be kidding me

Christians all, your Lord is coming, hope for peace is now at hand.
Let there be no hesitation, walk in faith where life demands.
Bear the word that God has given; share the birth that stirs your soul.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ will come and make you whole.
---Jim Miller, 1993

Prepare the way of the Lord. Wait...prepare the way of the Lord? It's struggle enough some days to prepare dinner tonight, or to prepare the presentation for the staff meeting tomorrow, or to prepare to hear the lab results from that medical exam you took last week. But to prepare the way of the Lord? What does that even mean, really, and how in this world are we supposed to prepare for something we haven't experienced and don't really understand?

Prepare? You've gotta be kidding me.

But wait a minute. I can hope for peace: real hope---the kind that puts feet to wishes, and real peace---the kind that surpasses the absence of discord to become wholeness and wellness lived out in whole and well community. And I can listen for the call of life on my life: what is it that calls out my gifts and passions, and who is it that needs the time and efforts I'm capable of? I can share my story with people who want to hear---a love story still in the making of brokenness and healing and pain and joy, and how the God whose best name is Love whispers keeping-on words to me, enough to share.

I can do these things; and you can, too. And in the doing, we may just find we are visited by God born in us, among us, like us. And in the doing, and in the visiting, we may be made whole.

It's a baby. And we prepared the way of the Lord.

...all I want

O come, Desire of nations, 
bind all peoples in one heart and mind;
bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
fill all the world with heaven's peace.
Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
---Latin hymn, c. 1710

Desire. As I word-process these words, Mariah Carey's voice is singing to me out of my iPad Pandora channel: "Make my wish come true...all I want for Christmas is you." The scuttlebutt on Facebook is that DietPepsi drinkers really, really, really want their aspartame back. In 1946, Don Gardner just wanted teeth---at least, that's what his holiday hit, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" said! All Steve Martin wanted in The Jerk was "this ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine, and the chair." And if you watch the ads around holiday time, folks really want vacuums (watch as the vacuum commercials magically disappear into a 10-month black hole on Dec. 26!). Surely this can't mean no one vacuums except between Thanksgiving and Christmas (I mean, no one but me)?

Imagine, though, what God's desire for God's own creation might be, what God's intent for this humanity (created in God's own image) might be. Imagine one people. Imagine working together to solve humanity's issues with the good of the littlest, the lost, and the least in mind. Imagine setting envy aside; moving beyond grasping at resources like shoppers in the flat screen aisle at a Black Friday sale; giving up our right to hold grudges.

Imagine that world. And then put on your work gloves---there are walls to tear down, and bridges to build. Because God is not a stand-around-and-watch-it-happen kind of God. God is a grab-a-hammer-there-are-plenty-of-nails kind of God. And I want in on building that world.

O come, Desire of nations, 
bind all peoples in one heart and mind.

...on the way

People, look east, the time is near
of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you able,
trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Guest, is on the way.
---Eleanor Farjeon, 1928

I know about some of the Christmas decorations out there. I've driven around. And I've cruised around FB too, and Buzzfeed. I've seen Santas, and snowmen, and nativity scenes (sometimes all in one yard). I've seen white lights, multi-colored lights, twinkle lights, chaser lights, net lights, all orange and blue lights (here in Auburn Tiger territory, not an uncommon sight).

I've seen tasteful and tacky, with a few stops in-between.

There is something in us, a good number of us anyway, that pokes and prods at us to pull out a Christmas sweater (or ten) for our house this time of year. Is it because we're happy? to make us happy? to convince other people we're happy? a bit of a combination of everything I've thought of, and more?

In this lovely poem from Eleanor Farjeon, we are reminded that we are preparing for the arrival of a special Guest, with all the 'trimming' that might bring. When we invite Love in to stay, what kind of decorating might we do to our hearts? How would we set the table of our lives to welcome Love? What would we do to prepare a place for this most important Guest?

People, look east, the time is near...

...shrugging off God-ness

For he is our childhood’s pattern;

day by day on earth he grew;

He was tempted, scorned, rejected,

tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness,

And he shares in all our gladness.

---Cecil F. Alexander, 1848

“You don’t know how I feel!” “Nobody remembers what it feels like to be my age!” “You have no idea what I’m going through!” Now, whether you are a child or a teen, a young adult just starting out on your own or an elder dealing with the autumn of life, chances are you have felt (if not voiced) these very sentiments. I know I have. There is no emotion so isolating as what this hymn refers to as ‘sadness’; the feeling that others don’t know what you are experiencing is one that builds walls between people, making it even more unlikely that anyone will connect with you. Here’s the thing, though. God knows. Jesus has been there.

The miracle of the incarnation, ‘becoming flesh’, is that part of becoming flesh means being human --- with the aches and pains, the tears and fears, the insecurities and lonelinesses. To shrug off God-ness for a time, Jesus took on skin, and everything that fit inside it --- the jumbled mass of feelings and aspirations that make us real. For this, Jesus walked out of heaven and into Bethlehem.

Our pattern, our goal, in humanity, incarnate. The Christ Child.

...that kind of dawn

Light dawns on a weary world when eyes 
begin to see all people's dignity.
Light dawns on a weary world: 
the promised day of justice comes.
The trees shall clap their hands; the dry lands, gush with springs;
the hills and mountains shall break forth with singing!
We shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace,
as all the world in wonder echoes 'shalom'.
---Mary Louise Bringle, 2001

What would true justice look like? Would it be absolute fairness? A chance for everyone, then everyone for himself? Mel Bringle envisions justice as a condition by which we truly see each other, and thus see the intrinsic value in the other; we view each other with dignity.

Our world's response to the dawning of the day of justice in our world, weary for it, thirsty for it? Isaiah suggests we might witness the natural world break the bounds of possible and become animated with joy---forests and mountains clapping and singing out of their own accord, lending voice to God's own joy over humankind gone mad with value and esteem.

And we ourselves? The prophet says joy will overcome us, too---that our steps will lead us out in joy and peace. I don't know about you, but I imagine I'd walk a little differently on this earth each day if my steps were ordered by joy and peace. Can you feel the rhythm of that gait in your body, in your soul, right now?

Are you smiling? I know I am; I just can't help it. It is no surprise to me that the world shares the wonder at the 'shalom' (literally, the wholeness found in community) that we find together.

That's the kind of dawn I'd get up early for...

...a whole lot of light

Heavy clouds that block the moonlight now begin to drift away.
Diamond brilliance through the darkness shines the hope of coming day.
Christ, the morning star of splendor, gleams within a world grown dim. 
Heaven's ember fans to fullness; hearts grow warm to welcome him.
---Mary Louise Bringle, 2005

Waiting is so hard. The smallest sign can be enough to keep you hanging on.

When you are sitting in the dark, even a tiny glow looks like a whole lot of light. Day is breaking...can you feel it?

We wait with expectation for the dawning of light in our world.

...and nothing else

Many the gifts, many the people,
many the hearts that yearn to belong.
Let us be servants to one another,
making your kingdom come.
Christ, be our light! 
Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ, be our light!
Shine in your church gathered today!
---Bernadette Farrell, 1993

The title of the 1979 memoir I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can always makes me think of that moment when someone has given 100 percent. "You take it from here, pardner," I hear them say, "I'm out." Or, <mic drop>...done. Elvis has left the building.

And I sometimes wonder if Jesus ever felt a bit of the pull of that tension---his time ticking away, knowing he'd need to count on his rag-tag band of followers to spread the word (that love was the way), knowing he was the Sun, but he'd be having to count on the Moon to reflect the shine in the world before too long. I wonder if Jesus felt like he was dancing as fast as he could.

The church lives in that tension too---never more so than here in the Advent season, when we await the great Already/NotYet: the shining of Light into our shadowy corners, the coming of Christ into our longing world. This verse of the modern folk hymn Christ, Be Our Light by Bernadette Farrell speaks to the divergence, and richness, of what we know, and acknowledge, and embrace. While we yearn for Christ to be our light in this world, to dawn on us, we yoke ourselves with Christ the Sun. As the church, we are the body of Christ in the world, reflecting light like the moon reflects the sun's.

If Christ is to shine in the shadowed corners, it will be through the light reflected by Christ's body, the church. It will be because we served one another. It will be because we welcomed each other. It will be because we nurtured and developed the gifts each brought to share.

If Christ is to shine in our world today, it will be because the church is devoted to the work of building the reign of Love, and nothing else.

...you say yes

No payment was promised, no promises made;
no wedding was dated, no blueprint displayed.
Yet Mary, consenting to what none could guess,
replied with conviction, "Tell God I say, Yes."
---John L. Bell, 1992

Let's make a deal! Well...not a deal, really. I need this, well, this favor. It's pretty huge. And there is no way I can put into human terms what the costs and rewards might end up being for you. I can tell you, though...amazing...and heartbreaking...and world-changing...and earthshaking. 

No person could be faulted for pushing away from the table with a deal like that on it. Too vague, too open-ended, too many possible downsides. Besides, your life is falling into place, your ducks are all in a row, you may not be Junior League just yet but it could happen.

But you say yes. Yes to...what, exactly? To uncertainty (that starts the moment you show up at your engagement party pregnant)...to heartache (there is Simeon in the temple, whispering something to you about a sword piercing your heart, too?)...to fear (now you flee under cover of night into Egypt, a bounty on the life of your baby boy).

But you also say yes...to joy...and to hope. And because you say "Yes," the rest of us get the chance to say yes.

We say yes to love.

...again, for the first time

Can I, will I forget how Love was born
and  burned its way into my heart: 
unasked, unforced, unearned:
to die, to live, and not alone for me.
---Jaroslav J. Vajda, 1986

I'm guilty. Every once in a while, when I hear a certain story start up, the tale winding out of a certain mouth, I'll think, "Not again. How many times do I have to sit through this same old tired yarn?" Folks may say, "Stop me if you've heard this..." but they don't really mean it. People like telling their stories, and as a culture we may be gradually returning to finding value in the stories of everyday people. Programs such as StoryCorps, and radio shows/podcasts like The Moth and Talking History promote the valuing and sharing of oral history and story as both cultural record and art form. And of course, not so many centuries ago, stories were the way cultural histories and beliefs were passed from generation to generation.

Do we ever have that been there, done that thought about the stories of our faith? "Nah, I've heard that 'Baby in a manger' story before; just gonna skip the service this Christmas." "Ehh, I know how that Jesus story turns out; no need to show up for Good Friday and Easter." Well, strictly speaking, we do know how those stories go --- we've heard them plenty of times. And we may, once in a while, even have a 'not again' feeling about those stories. We could say them in our sleep. We could set them to rhyme. We could draw pictures of them. We could sing songs about them. Chances are, we may have done some of that.

Here's the thing, though.

This Love? This new-born Love that seeps into our souls without us having to quest for it, to earn it, to wrest it away from anyone else? We will forget. 

We will forget. 

And so, we go to church, and we listen to the stories, again, for the first time. And the story is new. And it is old. And we will remember. And we will forget.

We will forget.

And we will listen again. Because in the repeating, we are made new. Every single time.

...the weary road

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing!
---Edmund H. Sears, 1849

Are you on the weary road? Not yet? Almost? Running parallel, and hoping to avoid the cross street that will carry you there? I don't mind telling you, I've been there---sometimes through no fault of my own, life's roadmap having directed me there through circumstance or happenstance, and me none the wiser. Sometimes, that destination was the fault of my own internal GPS, sending me down roads for which I was ill-equipped, weighed down with too much freight, exceeding the maximum passenger limit, barreling down some highway to God-knows-where, God-knows-why, because I have long ago forgotten the where and why. I'm weary, and that's what I know.

Right about then---right about now---angel song would sure sound nice. Right about then---right about now---I could lay down my burdens, and stretch my aching muscles, tense from constant alertness for that next thing coming to ambush my perfectly good day. Right about then---right about now---pulling over onto the shoulder of that weary road, and wrapping a blanket around me, climbing onto the hood of the car and leaning against the smooth windshield would feel pretty fine. Right about then---right about now---bathing in the starfall of a zillion messengers with heart-burstingly good news of real peace feels like all the heaven I need.

Right about then---right about now---glad and golden hours. Thanks be.

...who we are together

Every valley will be lifted up,
every mountain and hill eased low;
And the crooked path will lie straight,
and the rough patches smooth as glass:
And everywhere around will be evidence of 
the Lord,
And all of us will see it, the human family,
all of us together:
The Lord has always intended it be so.
---Isaiah 40:4-5 (para. laca)

Together. What a powerful word. Christianity is bound up, much of it, in individualism; making a personal profession of faith, choosing a private walk with Christ, developing an intimate relationship with God independent of any hierarchical relationship.

But there is a lot of together in faith. In this prophetic, forward-looking passage from Isaiah, the poet/seer yearns for the day when every geography is, well, flat. And if you are like me, and you are a mountain person, you are thinking, "Boooorrrrrrinnnnng. Who wants a world where everything is flat?" Which may be true. For the able -bodied. For the unencumbered. For the light traveler, not toting burdens, or children, or elderly parents. For the rested, not bent with sorrow or weariness.

But, for us all to gather around and witness the evidence that the Lord, Love, is here among us, we all have to be able to gather. The ground must be level and smooth, and the path must be straight, for us all to approach the glory of God. For us all to be witnesses, we first have to be here. Together. 

In this life, in God's household, if we don't approach together, we don't approach at all.

And all flesh shall see it together. (King James Version)

#ubuntu. I am who I am because of who we are together.

...that road trip, though

Holy Jesus, every day keep us in the narrow way;

and when earthly things are past, bring our ransomed souls at last

where they need no star to guide, where no clouds Thy glory hide.

---William C. Dix, 1861

Have you ever been on that road trip? The one where, because nobody is exactly sure where you are going, everybody is sure where you are going? The one where arguments follow every wrong turn (and every right, or left, one, for that matter)? The one where, for the life of you, you can’t remember what was so good about wherever it was you were going that you had to get in this car full of clowns and drive there? The one where the only thing you had running through your head was Tracy Chapman singing ‘Give Me One Reason to Stay Here (and I’ll Turn Right Back Around)’? Good trip gone bad, baby.

Now, imagine that trip---but with no clear destination, and only a vaguely-formed purpose in mind. Oh. And maybe the journey will take TWO YEARS. Or not. You’re on a need-to-know basis with the unfolding story, and apparently you don’t #needtoknow all that much. The things you know? Track the movements of a strange celestial happening, and follow that star. And find a King. No, not your king (that would be so easy---what do you think this is? Hide and seek?)…the King of a religious group in a Roman-occupied territory over there in that general vicinity. Oh. Now things become clear. #eyeroll But patience is a virtue, and the astronomers have plenty of time to work on their virtue as they follow.

You and I, though---how would we do with a challenge that nebulous, directions that vague, an objective sketched out in shifting sand instead of concrete? Would we follow, gifts at the ready--- staking our reputations, our futures, our hopes on a promise we traced on a map of the sky?

Would we gamble on a God who gambles on us, buying our souls from the meaninglessness of living without the star?

…and when earthly things are past, bring our ransomed souls at last

where no one needs a GPS, the path to show, the way to bless.

...before I believe

Where shepherds lately knelt and kept the angel's word,
I come in half-belief, a pilgrim strangely stirred.
but there is room and welcome there for me,
...and not alone for me.
---Jaroslav J. Vajda, 1986

Welcome. Welcome for me, stumbling in with no clue, and even less right. Not even sure why I'm here sometimes, not sure what draws me, who draws me, to this quiet scene. There is a diffuse light, and the damp warmth of night-calm animals. The babe makes the tiniest sounds...almost no sound at all. I remember a time when those newborn cries sounded louder than thunder. His mother comforts him; and it is easy, in that moment, to feel that everything in the babe's life will be charmed, that the star over the stable is a kind of sign, a blessing.

I know, of course. No one's life is lived under a blessing star. This baby won't be any different---will he? Because there is something...something...that pulls me to him. It isn't the charm of the star, or the comfort of the mother, though they hold their own appeal.

I need to believe there is room for me. Even before I believe.

...hush

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.
---Liturgy of St. James, 5th cent.

Hush.

I'm afraid I often miss it. As a sometime musician, and a sometime wordsmith, I am a two-time loser in the silence department. Keep silence? I would sooner walk on my hands all day (and that, friends, is not happening). Most of the time, I see silence as a vacuum to be filled, an invitation to respond to, a note passed in fifth grade with a place to check 'yes' or 'no'. 

And even in, or especially in, worship, my response to perceiving the presence of God---vast as universe, close as breath---is sound and motion. Say something, do something---THERE IS GOD!
Like the Psalmist, I want to sing a new song---a loud one, a better one, a prettier one---to the Lord. Like David, I want to rip off my cloak and lose myself in a dance of such abandon that my soul will finally be revealed...<sigh>...to the one who created my soul and inhabits it still. Like Peter, I want to spring into action, gathering up sticks and building the hut to end all huts, so that, forevermore, #wecanallhangoutandthisfeelingwillneverchangebecauseJesusyouarethesparkliest.

When sometimes, the perfection, the completeness, the wholeness of worship might be bound up in silence. In stillness. In breatheinbreatheout. In wait. 

But. That's not my spiritual gift.

Hush.

...when the world turns

Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God's mercy must deliver us 
from the conqueror's crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise which holds us bound,
till the spear and rod can be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.
---Rory Cooney, 1990

God's unearned pardon reigns down 
on those who make awe their breathe-in, breathe-out.
God's strength is exercised in a surprising way;
the proud find themselves alone with their 
hollow, shallow concerns.
God has emptied out boardrooms and 
stripped off power suits all over,
and raised up those who never grasped at greatness;
God pulls out a chair at the feast for the left-outs,
and the A-list are turned away at the door, 
shaking their heads in disgust.
God doesn't forget God's fundamental nature;
mercy, and the merciful, are at the very heart of God.
---Luke 1:50-55 (para. laca)

Power and might are not what they seem. Sometimes they are rather well-disguised. But look out. We may all be surprised by what strength looks like.

When the world turns.

...release God

There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness to God's justice which is more than liberty.
...
But we make God's love too narrow by false limits of our own;
and we magnify God's strictness with a zeal he will not own.
...
For the love of God is broader than the measure of our mind;
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
...
---Frederick W. Faber, 1854

What fools we are, to create God in our own petty little image, and then to submit ourselves, and each other, to this little-god's judgement and condemnation. When --- oh, God --- the world would expand to neverending-ness right away if we trusted that God was always more.

Always more. 

Always more love.

Always more kindness.

Always more acceptance.

Always more forgiveness.

If we would release God from the chains of being made in our brokedown image...and step into the blazing reality of, ourselves, being created in God's image. Imagine what we might become, what we might already be.

Always more.

Always more.

...light me up

Jyothi dho Prabhu.

(Give us light, O Lord.)

---bhajan, northern India

Give it to me, baby. 

Give me all your 4's (Go fish).  

Give me patience, and I want it right now.

Give me all your money, and nobody gets hurt.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.

Gimme.

We love the word. We use it early and often. To be fair, sometimes we are doing the giving, and that is a really good thing. But in this prayer from northern India, the pray-ers are asking---Give us light. We want it. What you have, Lord. Light of the world. Light for all time, or just the light that might get us through this present darkness. We yearn for that light, beg hungrily for it during our shadow seasons. And we maybe don't care if we sound grabby and greedy when we do the pleading. Our gimmes are that overpowering, and the dark is that, well, dark-ish.

Yet here's the thing. The prayer for light---Give it to us, Jesus---turns out to be not so selfish after all. Because the gift of light is sort of like Oprah's big car giveaway. Just one person can't get the light. Nah, light doesn't work that way. See, if you are sitting beside me? and you get light? guess what? That same light lights me up, too! And I can hear Oprah exclaiming, "YOU get a light! and YOU get a light! and YOU get a light!"

Because when light shines in this life, it lights up the whole place. That's the way light is. It's a gimme. 

Thank God.