Dearest Rachel –
As with so many stories I try to relate to you about the happenings around me, I’d like to think this would amuse you. It’s always better to see the humor in the misadventures of life than to be annoyed (or angered) by them; if nothing else, the latter doesn’t solve anything, and is just that much worse for one’s own mental health.
So, to set the stage; Christmas Eve services conclude with the singing of a verse or two of a handful of carols, with the last couple combined with the lighting of candles throughout the auditorium. The pastor lights his candle, and from his, other candles are lit, which in turn are offered to the next person in line, and their candles are lit, and so on and so forth. It’s not a custom unique to our church – the one back in your hometown did much the same, right down to the same final carol (“Silent Night”) – so I assume that folks reading this over your shoulder will be familiar with the practice. It’s meant to represent the spreading of the gospel from Jesus Himself from person to person until the whole room (represented by the auditorium) is filled with His light.
Only… during one of the services, someone in the back of the auditorium decided to pull a fast one on us; they brought their own lighters, apparently, and as Pastor Scott began to explain the procedure regarding lighting the candles, they had already lit their own in the back of the room. It caught him off guard – because who expects anyone in the congregation to do this? – and after a moment of mirth, they were instructed to extinguish their candles, so that the lighting process could proceed as per usual.
While the moment served as little more than a brief hiccup in an otherwise straightforward ceremony, it got me to thinking about the analogy it could represent. Here in life, we all too often travel ‘by our own lights,’ as the saying goes, thinking that, as long as our path appears to be lit by something, we’re doing okay. There are, after all, plenty of man-made paths toward spirituality and self-improvement, and those that follow them do seem to be ‘better’ people for following them. Why light your candle with Jesus, when something else is easier or closer at hand?
Of course, the analogy breaks down pretty quickly, as there really is no difference as to how a candle is lit; once it’s burning, the flame is, in fact, the same. There is no heresy involved in terms of how it was kindled. It may upset the order of the service by being set alight by one’s own lighter, but the light that it gives off is essentially the same.
Or is it? Long before the days of Christ, and only a little while after the original Torah was handed down from Mount Sinai, the eldest sons of Aaron, the first priest of the children of Israel, brought what is referred to as ‘strange fire’ into the holy place to light the altar. The scriptural account doesn’t go into any more detail than that at to what made it ‘strange’; only that it was something other than what the Lord instructed. From a human perspective, it’s hard to guess as to what the issue was; fire is fire, right? Not to the Lord, however, and he made His displeasure abundantly clear about it.
(And in fact, it may have not had anything to do with the fire in and of itself; while the scripture doesn’t explain what made it ‘strange’ in the first place, the Lord proceeded to issue countermeasures to prevent such from happening again by ordering that priests on duty not to drink on the job – which, for anyone in the work force, should be a reasonable request from any employer, let alone the Lord Almighty. It’s possible that Nadab and Abihu, by showing up drunk for duty, were being sufficiently disrespectful and careless toward the Lord’s tabernacle – and in particular, the fire on the altar – that He had no choice but to, ah, fire them. And if that seems like a harsh punishment for a single slip-up, consider the consequences in our modern world for someone who drinks and, say, gets behind the wheel of a car. Granted, the consequences aren’t always fatal – and often, one can get home perfectly safely in such a condition – but they happen often enough to give one pause about doing so.)
Now, in terms of our own hearts, the analogy also breaks down in that we don’t have a lighter of our own with which to illuminate our souls; that’s something only the Light of the World can give us. To be sure, those other means of supposed self-improvement can give the appearance of enlightenment, but they are little better than the flickering shadows cast on the wall of Plato’s cave. They barely resemble the real thing, once we turn our eyes upon it – but that’s the point; we need to turn our eyes upon it, at which point, those things of earth grow strangely dim. Because they are, and not strangely so at all.
To that end, honey, I’d ask that you keep an eye on me as I continue to follow the True Light. Dim though they may be in comparison, there are plenty of flickering distractions along the way; they can be more than enough to pull me in this direction or that. And as you do so, wish me luck; I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 