It has been just over a year since I returned from my visit to our Presbyterian brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. For the most part, once powerful memories have faded into a not so distant past. But not all of them. Several nights ago I was blowing out a single candle that brought light to our darkened living room. It’s funny how memories can be so easily triggered. I suddenly found myself arriving at the homes of host families after long, hot and tiring days. Since much of Zimbabwe’s infrastructure is crippled, electricity comes and goes…but mostly goes! For all the frustration this could cause, Zimbabweans cope: cooking over open fires and regulating their lives according to random blackouts. In fact, one positive to blacked out homes was that once we arrived and were introduced to our hosts, we could not be distracted by television, computers, or lit rooms to hide away in. We were forced to do something in which contemporary Americans engage less and less. Whole families and sometimes neighbors would crowd into a living room, light a candle or two and…talk! Actually talk! Some of my best conversations in Zimbabwe and some of the closest relationships I developed, came about in these living room conversations. In these candle lit rooms, relationships were born, nurtured and deepened.
John’s gospel speaks of Christ’s birth by proclaiming: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. For those of us who are living in some type of darkness - sin, loneliness, depression, anxiety, addictions - this truth of Christ as a light in the darkness is a promise to cherish and proclaim. We will do both on Christmas Eve and, this year, on Christmas morning (a Sunday!). We will gather around the light as if we are in a Zimbabwean living room and relationships will be built; our most important relationship being that with the living Christ and our secondary relationships with brothers and sisters in faith.
But there is a challenge in this Zimbabwean metaphor. If you are like me, a different kind of problem comes every Christmas. Between shopping and decorating, parties and house guests; between the busy-ness and the business of Christmas; we put a lot of “artificial light” onto Christ’s birth. The very reason for the season is often lost amidst this light. Like a candle in an over-lighted room, its flickering flame is hardly noticed. And ironically, we wake up on December 26th with no stronger a relationship with God or others.
So this Advent and Christmas season, turn down the artificial lights, sit in a dark room for a moment and let candle light and conversation remind us of the real reason for Christmas: God so loved us and our world, that he sent a light into it that can never be overcome, conquered or put out. That light is Christ and His love is for you! In your candle lit rooms, may relationships be born, nurtured and deepened.
Merry Christmas. Rob