Because that electric candle set was in the window of that spare bedroom, that meant that room was part of Christmas. The room was included in the festivities because it had that slight, small decoration. I think I used to want to keep it company, to go into the room and look out the window with it. Someone needed to be there, to keep watch, to draw pictures in the fog on the glass. To sit there and wait in the darkness and cold for Christmas to come with the small lights shining out of that window, celebrating all on their own.
Of course, one of my favorite Christmas shows that we would watch on TV each year was "A Charlie Brown Christmas" from 1965. And, my favorite song was the haunting "Christmas Time Is Here" sung by the St. Paul's Episcopal Church Choir from San Rafael, California. I'd go into that little spare room at night, and if music can set a scene, imagine this rolling around in my little head as that candle shone its light out into the dark night.
Fleming Rutledge in her book, Advent, says that Advent begins the dark. In the “now but not yet” of Jesus having come as a baby and introducing his Kingdom, and in us waiting for him to come a second time to set all things right. We look back in the Advent season before Christmas to Jesus’s first coming and we look forward to his return. Yet, we wait in the dark. Empty rooms with the lights off and small plug in candle sets shining out into the dark, cold December night perhaps tell a story about small lights in our lives that shine far beyond their actual reach. That sense of another world breaking in, of hope, of light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it (John 1:5).
I’m so glad my mother put that little plug in candle set into that spare bedroom. That one little decoration in a room dedicated for other things, out of the way and unvisited unless guests arrived. The extra room that didn’t see a lot of traffic, that didn’t have the big tree and presents or other decorations contained a little candle set shining its small light into the darkness on cold December nights. But, in that small scene as a child, my mind was in Bethlehem, in the stable and the manger, attended to by shepherds, the star shining bright. Something was being birthed in my heart as I sat drawing pictures on the foggy windows. I remember thinking that this was Christmas too — or the lead up to it. And, it was important to wait and long for what was to come. I was waiting for Christmas with the joy and presents and excitement, but I didn’t realize then that in the waiting, my heart was being slowly trained to wait for Jesus.
Jesus is “true light, which gives light to everyone,” and he has come into the world (John 1:9). I pray that as you go through this Advent and Christmas Season, as you celebrate and worship with our church, and as you gather with friends and family, that you will look for the Light. Look for where the Light breaks through into the darkness and meet Jesus there. And, most of all, I pray that His Light shines in your own heart out into a dark world waiting for the King to come.
Finally, I'll leave you with this: If we go back to A Charlie Brown Christmas, we see that Linus got it right when he tells Charlie Brown what Christmas is really all about ... and, notice that he even drops his blanket when he recites the angel's admonition to "fear not." Light shining in the darkness, indeed.
