Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, I clean the house and put up my Christmas decorations. The cleaning takes about two and half hours and the decorating about 20 minutes. I’m not “Mrs. Christmas,” so I only have a few decorations. But the decorations I do put out have lights. White twinkle lights or colored, it doesn’t matter. I crave the comfort of light during the darkest part of the year.

Some may say that if it weren’t for the darkness, we wouldn’t know the light. The same can be said for grief and joy, sour and sweet, strife and peace. It’s also interesting to note that darkness cannot be overcome by darkness but only by light. I like to think about that as I admire my Costco wreath on our front door with its changing lights of blue, red, and green. The colored lights really don’t show up that well in the sunniness of high noon, but by 6pm, their brightness illuminates our front porch.

Just as we can’t make the days get longer (and brighter), we can’t always change or even influence areas of our lives which seem weighed down by darkness. We can know, though, that everything changes. Dark and difficult days will pass, and so will good days that we wish would last forever. Our days will grow brighter and longer as the seasons move into spring and summer, only to become darker and shorter again as the seasons of fall and winter approach. The cyclical nature of birth, death, and resurrection happens in nature and also in us, both literally and figuratively.

So I put out twinkle lights at Christmas to remind me of the power of light and hope to overcome darkness. I put them out for comfort in the midst of life’s changing seasons. I put them out because I am ever reaching for the Light, both within and without.