John 1:4-5 “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

So here I was Friday night, tired after my shift here and a busy week at work, ready to go home and just chill in my living room with all the Christmas lights on.  My tree’s on a timer and comes on shortly before I get home.  But I could tell even before I got in the room that something was wrong, because the lights weren’t reflecting as brightly down the hallway.

Sure enough, when I turned the corner I could see that an entire section of lights on the tree was not working.  It’s one of those pre-lit trees, which means if a section goes out (unless you forgot to plug something in!) you’re pretty much stuck with it.  Checking for a burnout bulb just doesn’t work anymore (remember now that we’re supposed to be grateful we don’t have to do that anymore!). And since I’d just had to put a separate strand of lights on the tree last year because another part of the tree had gone dark, I wasn’t too keen on having to do this again.

So for the next 2 hours, I proceeded to take all the ornaments off the tree so I could check and see if I’d forgotten to plug one section to another, etc. Of course that wasn’t the problem; otherwise they wouldn’t have worked in the first place…Duh! At about 9:30 on Friday night I gave up for the night and vowed to look at it again in the morning after I was properly rested.  As you might imagine, when I tried to find the problem the next morning nothing had changed.  Stupid tree, I thought, I should just throw you in the garbage and go get a new one.  Even my daughter agreed it would probably be easier in the long run to just go and buy another tree.

As the scripture above reminds us, there’s one light that will never burn out or need replacing? That it is the light of Jesus, who came into the world all those years ago to provide for us a way to get out of the darkness of sin forever.  And darkness doesn’t stand a chance against the light of Jesus my friend!

A couple of days ago, after being committed to buying another tree, I instead took Verne’s advice and bought a couple more strands of lights to put on the tree.  Oh sure, I’m taking a chance that I’ll have to do the same thing next year but I’m only out $7 this time around.  Now the light of Jesus is another story…. that one’s guaranteed for all Eternity! So, go tell someone about Jesus this holiday season. And Merry Christmas!

Hark, the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn king!

Grace and Peace,

Dennis