Light my Candle

One of the things we do every Christmas Eve as a family is go to the Christmas Eve service at our church.  It's a candlelight service.  Every person over the age of about 10 is given a candle ... unlit ... with a cardboard ring under it to catch the wax.

At the end of the service, a single candle which has been burning throughout the carol sing, is used to light the candles of the people on the end of each pew.  That person lights the next person's candle, and so on.

Our kids love to go to this.  They sing the carols with gusto and their favorite part is the candle-lighting part... the pastor says a few words of inspiration and then we all sing "Silent Night" as someone plays the piano or a guitar.  After that, our family goes out looking at Christmas lights in the city, and after that, we all traipse home and sing Christmas carols around the tree, and we have hot chocolate and maybe watch Christmas specials until it's time to go to bed.

I love watching the flame on a candle. Even when I was a child, I'd watch the single tongue of fire piercing the darkness when the power would go out in the evening during a winter storm.  I'd lose myself in its subtle variances of colour and strength, watch how it danced and in so doing, invited the shadows to dance with it.  It drew me, like some indescribable force telling me that it represented purity, passion, power. Calling me to something more, to something higher.  Still does.


I remember a candlelight service I attended once many years ago in a little country church.  There might have been about fifty people there, maybe less.  Everyone had their candles, unlit.  The pastor asked us to move with our candles to the outside of the room and make a circle all around the edge of the sanctuary.  Once we were in place, he had someone turn off the lights, revealing only one candle burning at the front of the church. Then he lit the first person's candle on either side of him, and we lit each other's candles until everyone's was burning. 

The pastor started by saying, "I'm not going to speak very many words tonight.  All I will say is that God has given each one of us who believes in Jesus a light inside.  He has reached into the darkness in each of us ... and lit our candles.  Now, since these candles we've just lit tonight represent that light in each of us, and God in our lives, I would like you to try a little experiment with me to see what happens."  

We all looked at him quizzically. 

"Please take your candles, and keeping them upright, slowly lower them down as low as you can get them without bending or squatting."  We did.  The light level in the room diminished significantly. "What just happened?" he said, and we told him it got darker. He nodded.  "Now, just as slowly, I want you to lift them up again, and keep going until they are as high as you can get them."  We did, and we saw the light grow in the room until it was twice as bright as when they were in front of us at chest level.  

"I think you get the point of my sermon," he said softly.


We did.