Christmas Lights
John 1:4-5
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.
I have become part of a group, the Columbia-based Beer Theology posse. Five of us are behind the upcoming Libations: Craft Beer Church event (Church and Beer, essentially) this coming Thursday night down in Lancaster City at the Community Room on King, known for those in the know as C-ROK. Please take note. We will recognize you as an insider if you use the abbreviation. We won't let you in otherwise. Innovation comes in from the edges and Columbia is on the age literally and figuratively.
In college, I thought the Susquehanna River, which Columbia resides next to, was the end of civilization, until one arrived in St. Louis, where I was born. As I have written about before, I run 2.5 miles to the river on a side road and then back two or three times a week. It is a hard slog and it takes me just, and I mean just (like seconds) a little less than an hour. With the days shortening and the clocks falling back, it gets dark really early. Which means if I want to run, it will typically be in the night.
I have a reflective vest and there are not a ton of cars on the side road. But, it is not exactly safe. The other night I laced up the jogging shoes for the run, headed out, and was quite touched by all of the Christmas lights along the route. Made all the more beautiful by the shrouding darkness. See my elaborate display above. All of the ten seconds of work is worth it when I flick that switch. Since the Christmas lights are LED, I don't bother unplugging the cord during the day and turning them off. On bright days, the lights can 't be seen anyway, and on dreary days, the lights provide some solace. Although, I must say, I still like the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs better. They have a warmer light and color, much like how a vinyl record sounds richer than an MP3 or a CD. But, for pennies a year, it is hard to argue with the cold efficiency of LED. Spock-like.
As I ran through the poorer neighborhoods in Columbia, I saw less and less Christmas lights. A metaphor for losing hope maybe?
It used to be the case in my neighborhood that few townhomes had lights, but some recent move-ins have really stepped up, including the Griswold-like neighbors up the road a bit who have a garish and gaudy display on their stand-alone rancher like a Chica with too much make-up, baubles, and perfume. Or, an overwrought TV evangelist I like my Christmas light "less is more" Zen. Thin.
The whole Christmas light thing got me thinking about Jesus, who was the light in a dark place. 1st century Israel, under the boot of Imperial Rome, chafing under its authority. A boiling cauldron of trouble with faction against faction. God could have swept the whole land clear of its inhabitants into the deep sea (for all were guilty) but instead chose to incarnate Himself as a human being in the lowliest station imaginable and take on the darkness from below. He had no place to lay his head, the Bible reports Jesus saying. A vagrant, a homeless man, a refugee, dependent on the generosity of others. If God has no Son, as Islam says, then humanity has no hope.
Other religions have their profoundness, even though I believe anything not based on the exclusivity of Christ to be profoundly wrong in the end. Can we keep up the post-modern pseudo quackery of all roads leading to God much longer? You can make a pilgrimage to Mecca, but you drag your sin with you. You can wash in the Ganges, but your karmic guilt remains. You can sit on the mountain-top as a monastic monk forsaking desire, yet your soul still dies. You can refrain from commerce on the Sabbath however sin is still costing you all the while. You can believe sin is not a reality, although empirically--based on what is going on in our depraved and deprived world--evidence proves otherwise, unless you are a nihilist beyond good and evil.
John Calvin writes in his commentary of Galatians 3:14 about the blessing of Abraham for all of the Nations by Faith, "All pride in human virtues and merits must cease, and people must recognize that they shall be utterly confounded unless they seek God in the way the He has appointed. Let Jesus Christ be sufficient, since our salvation depends entirely on him. He (God) wants the message to be heard throughout the world since there is now an open door with free access by which we may draw near to Him."
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