Searching For Lights

For the past several years Ginny and I hardly decorated for Christmas at all, but a couple of weeks ago she decided she wanted to put up a tree this year. That meant digging through 40+ years of boxes of decorations we’ve been collecting throughout our marriage to find the specific ones she wanted.

Therefore, our tree sat barren and undecorated in our living room for several days while I hunted the lights—not just any old lights. Ginny envisioned our tree shining with a specific string of lights, one shaped like tiny old-fashioned oil lamps.

This string of lamps originally decorated my mother’s Christmas tree about 50 years ago. After Mama died, we ended up with this string of lights.

Where are they now?

We had to put lights on the tree before we added ornaments.

Oh, the joys of Christmas. My face full of spider webs from pulling down sealed cartons from high on the washroom shelves. The taste of dust from front and back closets as I lifted more boxes down…. Here’s that present I meant to give that kid last year, but I didn’t see him till August and by then I’d forgotten.

Six. Eight. Ten boxes of decorations from when we used to put up floor-to-ceiling Christmas trees. Decorations we bought. Ornaments the kids made when they were little. Santa figures friends gave us years ago. A bust of Caesar Augustus, in his day the most powerful man on earth, more famous than Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods combined, now he’s just a convenient peg for dating the birth of Christ.

But, no lights. No where.

Nothing left to do but bring the ladder into the house and search the attic. There are another six or eight sealed cartons of old Christmas stuff stored up there.

As I put on my shoes to go outside to get the ladder, Ginny said, “Just a second, John. I want to check something”.

Sure enough, she found the lights hidden underneath some Santa beards in one of the first cartons we’d pulled out.

Good.

She plugged in the string to test the lights.

One brilliant flash .

Then darkness.

At that, I said some traditional season’s greetings.

Now, this old string was wired in series? Parallel? I forget which is which—the kind of old wiring that when one bulb goes out, they all go dark.

Nothing to do but test each little bulb one at a time—assuming that I was testing with a bulb that works in the first place.

The test bulb may have worked, or it may not have—end result, the lights stayed out.

After having searched for the lights for two and a half days, the next day, Ginny and I bought a new string of lights for pocket change…

Must be some deep spiritual lesson here somewhere.

Once our festive tree was up, in the true spirit of the season, Ginny and I watched a Godzilla movie.

As I’ve been thinking about searching for the lights, I remembered how in my younger days I boasted about being a Seeker after light—saying I was a seeker sounded so much better than admitting I was a sneaky sinning snot.

But, God turns the tables.

O, I’d see a flash of light now and then in my spiritual quest and I’d think I was on the right track—light on my terms.

But I was not seeking Light—I was evading it.

In reality, Light seeks men, we rarely seek Him.

Picture a criminal climbing over the prison wall in the dark of night. The last thing he wants is for the searchlight to spot him. And that’s just the mental image I get when reading the Apostle John’s account of Christ coming into the world:

“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not….

(Jesus) “was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world….

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”.

I’ve been going through a thing about an evil deed recently.

There’s something I want to do that God does not outright forbid; the Bible just says that to do it is a shame.

That gives me some wiggle-room…Or does it?

That’s the thing about Jesus.

He gives more light than I want.

On a happier note, early this morning I saw a photo that greatly pleased me.

It’s on The Far Side Of The Sea blog in Norway at http://felisol.blogspot.com/ .

The photo shows a Youle-nisse, that’s a sort of happy Norwegian Christmas elf. The one pictured at the library desk is reading a copy of Glog, a book I wrote!

Felisol, Thanks. I was so surprised to see my book displayed amid your sparking decorations. Gave me a lift! Your photo made my day.

This morning my friend Wes brought someone to visit me for the first time. The young man faces two job opportunities: one in Iraq, the other in a gambling casino out west. Serving in either place is sure to challenge his Christian life.