Friday, December 23, 2005

Got A Light?

I like night driving, at this time of year. I like to look at the Christmas lights and decorations. There are a few streets in our city that are "famous" for their displays and it's become a sort of family tradition to drive around town after the Christmas Eve candle light service admiring the glitz and glitter.

There's a house a few blocks over sporting a new decoration this year. Well, it may not be new, but I've only noticed it this year.

You've seen the wire "deer" that stand a-gazing, or poised as if to leap away; the ones whose wire frames are laced with little lights? You know, the ones that you recognize in the daytime, when their wire-framed forms are quite visible against the snow? The ones that become bright, blurry, vague shapes when darkness comes and the lights go on?

Well, this was a little wire, light-laced nativity scene.

There was Mary, there Joseph and central to all the little manger cradling Our well lit Lord.

I thought it was a poignant statement to a world looking for the true meaning of Christmas in department stores and shopping malls. Trying to buy The Light Of The World, and manufacture Peace. Needing God, but covering that need and filling those spaces in artificial ways.

For there, in the darkness, sure enough, was Jesus- but you could barely see him for all the lights.

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