First Friday of Advent
Originally posted Tuesday, October 25, 2011
My writing-for-pay work takes me to some unusual places. Yesterday I was talking to a man in Michigan about the new energy-efficient lights his company has developed for stadiums and arenas. As he said, existing light systems “can really make the meter spin.” Going back over my interview notes, a quote caught my attention: “We’re getting lumens out at the end of lamp life that are equal to those at the beginning of lamp life.”
I’m no expert on the topic, but if I understand the science correctly, lumens are a measure of the total amount of visible light emitted from a source. One of the problems the company is solving is how to keep the intensity of light from fading as a bulb ages.
Light is a constant theme in scripture and in our faith tradition: “And God said, ‘let there be light . . .’”; “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . .”; “Don’t hide your lamp under a bushel basket . . .”; “You are the light of the world . . .”; “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path . . .” to name just a few references. Candles are prominent in many Christian practices. At Wilshire we light the advent candles and on Christmas Eve we pass the light from one candle to another. At Easter we extinguish the light and wait for the return of His light.
As such, we don’t have much difficulty finding the light; it’s there when we read scriptures, pray, fellowship with believers, sing hymns, spend time in spiritual practices. The problem is keeping our spiritual lumens constant. We’re prone to let our light flicker when the storms of life roll in. For some people that can lead to spiritual angst, including fears of falling away or losing faith completely.
I’m no expert on this either, but it seems that the key is to remember that we are not the source of the light. We reflect, distribute, share, bounce, absorb and help direct the light. That makes us part of the grid, but we’re not the actual source. God alone is the source, and as long as we stay plugged in, we won’t go dark completely. We might grow dim from time to time, but with God’s grace, we’ll always shine at least a little.