All of us have memories of Christmas lights from larger bulbs and bubble lights to mini lights and the wheel-of-color spotlights that brightened our aluminum trees.
And although few of us, if any, can recall those pre-electricity days when candles adorned trees, we can picture candles on mantles and dinner tables and in luminaria lining walks and drives.
Most of us venture out to view awe-inspiring professional light displays, such as the Way of Lights Christmas Display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows. We also take delight in neighbors’ light displays. Yet our fondest memories of Christmas lights are not about looking at them but about putting
them up.
We remember the challenge of straightening out the tangled strings of lights. The perseverance needed to find the one burnt-out bulb that caused all the bulbs in the strand to go out. The difficulty of trimming trees and rooftops from a ladder. The effort it took to crawl under low tree branches or around bushes.
The challenges we face in putting up Christmas lights are, in some ways, microcosms of what we face in our lives. We have all found ourselves in situations so tangled that we thought we would never get things straightened out. Perhaps we were trying to care for a terminally ill family member while dealing with insurance companies, doctors, emotionally-strained family members, and our own emotions. Or maybe the situation was juggling work and a new baby, moving to another state, or giving up the family home.
There are also times when the spark seems to have gone out of our lives. A burned out bulb is affecting everything we do. We may no longer find joy or satisfaction in our job or volunteer work. We may feel distance growing in our relationship with our spouse, a close friend, an aging parent, or an adult child. Change is needed. But what?
Sometimes we feel as if life has brought us to our knees. We may have suffered the loss of a loved one, our job, our career, our independence. We are forced to move backward—to crawl before we can walk again.
At other times, life forces us to take risks—to climb to rooftops, to reach out. Whether we are moving to a retirement or assisted living home, enrolling in school to build a new career, getting married, or giving birth to or adopting a child, we are stepping out into the unknown and taking risks.
And God is there with us as we crawl or take risks. God clears our path, holds the ladder, shouts out warnings and encouragement, catches us when we fall, leads us back on track.
Just as Christmas lights brighten the darkest days of winter, God brings light into the darkest moments of our lives. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. This is what we depend on every single day.