Just enough light

This is a dark time of the year, and today has been a wild, windy and rainy day (though nowhere near as bad as it has been in some other parts of the UK). It always seems to me as I find myself in the dark days of December, that to do even the basic things I need to in order to get through the day requires special concentration and effort. It would be good to have a little more space, a little more light. It would be good not to have a tension headache and the beginnings of a seasonal cold!

But the fact is that, on our life journey, there will always be those wintry times when all we can hope to do is to struggle on, and to make our best fist of just keeping on the road. When I hit that sort of patch, the most I can hope and pray for is to be given enough light to take the next few steps. I'm just back from carol practice, and in joyous words and music we have been singing the praises of the one called Light of the World. As we read Luke's account of his coming, we find that the skies were filled with light and with songs of glory, as shepherds watched dumbfounded in the place where they had penned their sheep. But that was only shepherds, and they never counted for much. The rest of the world, even the quiet and unimportant city of Bethlehem, slept on unregarding. The manner of our Lord's arrival identifies him with those in our world who are pushed to the edge, those who struggle in dark places, the humble and the meek.

When I pray to God for light, for even just enough light for now, I know that I am praying to one who understands the darkness, who understands the edge places, who is there with the outcast, the strugglers, the downhearted, the dispirited and the browbeaten of our world. God knows what it's like to be me. That sentence could just be a cry of despair, a way of saying that nobody cares, nobody can help. But for me as Christmas approaches it is the opposite, as I think of and pray to the Babe of Bethlehem: God does know what it's like to be me, and we will hear me when I call. And I may not have much light to walk by, but I will have enough, if I am searching out his way; enough for myself, and I trust, a little bit to share with those around me whose way is also dark.