When it’s nighttime round our house, and one of us grown-ups needs to sneak to the kitchen for the glass of water we forgot, the door we needed to lock, or the dishwasher that needs to start humming, we don’t switch on the lights. We use our phones as flashlights and scurry through the darkness, hoping to avoid waking any sleeping children by sending shards of bright light shining underneath their doorways.
The other night on the way back to the bedroom from a flashlight adventure, I glanced out a window pane of the backdoor and just caught the faintest glimpse of a star in the sky. I brought my face close to the window pane, furrowed my brow and stared up to see what I might see, but I struggled to see anything.
Finally I realized the light from my flashlight was too bright. Once I’d fumbled to switch it off, the stars were aglow in the sky. I smiled up, not at just one, but the dozens that I could see with my face close to the window pane, just in that small space where the tall North Carolina trees weren’t blocking the sky from my view.
I marveled for a moment that I had to turn out the wrong light in order to see the right one. My heart whispered thankful to the Lord. He helps us see the light.
Before the hubs and I head on a photography adventure, we often pray, among many things, one specific thing: “Lord, help us see the light.” When you learn to see the light, when you learn to recognize what it does when it streams in through a window, or spills across a subject’s face, or rim lights them all around from behind, or creates gorgeous rays of sun flare that light up an image so glorious — when you learn to see that light, you are able to create so much beauty, and the possibilities are limitless.
Lord, help us see the light.
We’re entering a season with so many lights. Bright glaring ones begging our attention to this sale or that event or this is how they are doing it, shouldn’t we, too?
But the focus of the wise men on a single star brought them on the journey where they found the manger.
Meanwhile, the host of heaven must have lit up the sky when they sang to the shepherds that night in the field. How did all of Bethlehem not see it? Do we sometimes miss it?
There are so many lights this season, it’s true, but there’s just one light we really need to see.
We pray to the see the light because of how it helps us to see everything else. Even helps our cameras to see everything else.
The reason we need to see the right Light is that by that Light we can properly see everything else.
The advent season has begun, and here we simultaneously celebrate the Light of the World’s first coming, and we await His return.
In the deepest places of your soul, this is the perfect time to quiet down, to look, and to listen. Look for the Light this season. See God revealing Himself in a thousand small ways each day. Don’t stop giving thanks because the calendar no longer says November. Remember He holds you together and gives every breath.
Listen for the God-whisper: this is the greatest love story ever told. He has come, shined a light so bright a world of darkness couldn’t crush it. And — we are not without hope, the small word with big meaning behind the lighting of the first advent candle — we are not without hope, friends.
He is God with us, the God who dwells in us, and the God who will come again.
Keep looking, and you’ll see the Light.
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I’m looking forward to reflecting and savouring this Advent season with you. I’d love to humbly invite you to subscribe via email and to ‘like’ this little space to follow along. Oh Come, Let Us Adore Him, together.
Amen, friend. Welcome Christmas!