Tag Archives: Christmas Lights

The Champ

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The family that won the title for the most Christmas lights in 2014 hung 601,736 lights. However, their record was surpassed by God, Who lit only one light.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.  –  ( Isaiah 9:2)

How could one light beat out more than 600,000? God’s light spread and multiplied. What sort of light could do that? John said it like this:

In him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4 My parenthetical note)

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.  –  ( John 1:9)

Now, if the light that shone in the darkness is the life that was in Jesus, how did it become “the light of men?”

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. –  ( John 1:11-13)

Life begins with birth. Since God’s light is life, it is multiplied through the process of birth in those who receive it. No mere physical birth, it is nothing less than the birth in a human being of God’s eternal life. As He said it would, this light has spread around the world. 601,736 lights? Not even close…

We’ll Leave the Light On

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Once again, I watched “Close Encounters,” one of the best movies ever made.  Do you remember the scene, early in the movie, in which the people who had seen or sensed the presence of the aliens gathered on the hillside, lighting lights to welcome them?  Remember how they watched and waited, eagerly anticipating their coming? 

It would be nice if Christmas lights were lit with that same attitude, watching and waiting, eagerly anticipating the coming of our Lord.  Perhaps they once were, back before Christmas became flattened and homogenized into “Happy Holidays.”  But you and I can light welcoming lights year round, not on our gutters and bushes but in our attitudes and actions.  Watching and waiting, as many once did for His birth.

David said it like this:

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;  my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.  O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love,and with him is plentiful redemption.  And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.(Psalm 130:5-7)