THE SUNDAY SERMONETTE – In the Darkness, there is Light.
When I graduated from High School in May 1970, Mom, Dad, and I loaded up our brand-new Plymouth Fury III and journeyed West. Dad took annual leave from Kessler, and because Mom and I were out of school for the summer, we were gone for a month, touring all the sights between here and California.
We explored the historic weathered stones of the Alamo. We marveled at the sweeping grandeur of the Grand Canyon and were overwhelmed by Zion National Park, its red-rock wonderland created by wind, water, and snow. In Las Vegas, Dad, the big spender, lost a buck-fifty and called it quits.
Mom got a little queasy as we weaved down San Francisco’s Lombard Street. In Long Beach, I stood in awe beside the massive Queen Mary, amazed at her towering funnels and black hull, and sad that she was closed while being converted to a floating tourist attraction. But of all the sights we saw, the one that remains acid-etched in my memory was draped in darkness.
Carlsbad Caverns was first explored in 1898 by a teenager named Jim White using a homemade wire ladder, which we saw in 1970 and is still there today. An intrepid explorer, he named so many of the breathtaking sights in the cave. The King’s Palace. The Green Lake Room. Fairyland. The Bottomless Pit. And the Witch’s Finger. However, the Rock of Ages in the Great Room took my breath away with its soaring majesty.
Once in the Great Room, our tour guide instructed us to sit. I can hear Dad now mumbling about how hard the worn wooden benches were. She told us about the room’s history, the endless ages it took to form the undulating stalagmites and stalactites, and then she warned us of something to come. All eyes were on her. She touched a switch, the electric lights went out, and the darkest, blackest blackness I’d ever witnessed engulfed us. You couldn’t see anything! Dad, our white shirts, and Mom’s white blouse and straw hat were invisible. You could wave your hand in front of your face. Nothing! We were submerged in an inky darkness, glued to everything it touched.
And then, in the blackness, as the other tour guides hummed the hymn, Rock of Ages, suddenly there was light; a microscopic, pinprick of light from a single candle punctured the darkness. All eyes were glued on that speck of light flickering in the shadowy darkness surrounding us. And feeble though it was, it offered hope that the darkness was not permanent. And could be conquered.
As Christmas approaches, the days grow longer, and night comes all too soon. We long for light like Dad, Mom, and me sitting in Carlsbad’s darkness. Thankfully, we can flip a switch, and our world is filled with light again. But another kind of darkness can overtake us—the darkness of depression. Like the cave’s darkness, it blots out the light of those who love us, care for us, and long to put their arms around us until the darkness dissipates and we can relight another candle.
On the night Jesus was born, God lit a candle. It was a star that lit up the night sky, guiding the Wise Men to Bethlehem. It lit the dark desert for the shepherds, too. On that night, an eternal candle was given to the world in the form of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. That candle would dispel the world’s darkness and light it with its love, death, and resurrection that assures us eternal life.
You can be a candle as well. At Christmastime, many look for and need the warmth of your touch, the light you bring, and the joy you can give. Let your candle be that warmth, that light, and that joy in this dark, black world in which we live. So, take your candle. Go light the world.
Ponder this and go forth.
Thank you, Jennifer West Signs, for your lovely Christmas card. And thank you for painstakingly turning plain old rocks into works of art that dispel darkness with their messages of love and hope.