For Wilshire Baptist Church
Tuesday night we drove to Waco for a concert presented by Baylor’s Chamber Singers in the Foyer of Meditation at the Armstrong Browning Library. Seldom do venue and talent combine in such a magnificent way, and our ears were still ringing with crystalline solos and well-woven harmonies as we drove back across Central Texas in the dark.
I describe the trip that way because while most folks we know will jump on Interstate 35 in Dallas and get off in Waco, we take a different route and have for years. We drive Interstate 45 to Corsicana and then cross the countryside of Central Texas on State Highway 31. It’s a little bit longer than the more direct path of I-35, but there’s less traffic on I-45 — fewer big rigs racing between Mexico and Canada — and almost no traffic of any kind on 31. What’s more, you see things on 31 you don’t see from the interstate. That’s true during the day but even more so after dark and especially in December when you see the lights of Christmas.
There seems to be a widespread desire among people to decorate their homes and businesses with Christmas lights. It was true during my childhood when we’d pack the car with family and cruise the neighborhoods of Richardson and North Dallas to see the light displays. There was a lull during the “energy crisis” of the late 1970s when everyone was conserving power, but the tradition came roaring back and it’s as strong as ever. No doubt that’s been spurred in recent years by considerable improvements in technology. The big, glass incandescent bulbs of the past have been replaced by smaller, more efficient LEDs that can be programed to change colors and flash on and off.
We’re not immune to the urge to light up our house for Christmas. We decorate with lighted garland around the front door and porch railings and around the roofline. It sounds like a lot, but the lights are not so bright and the color is warm instead of the icy white many people seem to prefer.
Driving across the open countryside in the dark, you see Christmas light displays in every possible color and pattern. They’re on houses and barns, trailers and double-wides, welding shops and propane suppliers, fences and gates. They’re created with strings of bulbs, blankets of twinkling lights, lit Christmas trees, glowing Santas and reindeer, flood-lit nativities and odd-shaped arrangements that defy definition. It doesn’t really matter because it’s all about the lights.
What really caught my attention Tuesday night is no display seemed to too small to be shown. In contrast to the aspirations of Clark Griswold to have his house seen from space, many people apparently are content to have just a little light. In some cases it looked like folks plugged in a single string of lights and stretched it as far as it would go, no matter if their effort lit only one porch column or just part of the roofline. It’s as if in the doing they were saying to the world, as the old gospel chorus says, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”
And perhaps that’s the simple message and plain truth of Christmas. The light from a single star shown down on a stable where the “light of the world” was born to illuminate our own lives, no matter how big or small they may seem. Not everyone lives large as measured by society, and that’s just fine. The smallest light – like beautiful music – can cast darkness from souls, illuminate paths for the lost and brighten the dimmest corners of the world.