Under A Light

We were sitting in church in a pew near the back.  It was an unusually dark and gray morning.  The lights of the sanctuary were turned on.  It  might be that they are always turned on for services on Sunday morning.  But most of the time there is enough light streaming in from outside that I don’t really notice the lights in the building.  This morning, for all its dreariness outside, I noticed and welcomed the warm lights in the sanctuary.

It was midway through the sermon when I noticed out the corner of my eye 9-year-old Emma making strange faces and playing with something on her skirt. It wasn’t distracting, so I didn’t pay much attention at first.  But after a few minutes of it, I finally leaned to my left to speak with her.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Mom!” came her excited whisper back, “I am sittin’ right under a light!”

“What?” I turned to look at her.

“I’m sittin’ right under a light!” she repeated, this time cautiously pointing a little finger up at the ceiling above her.

I looked up.  She was right.  Directly overhead was one of the 12 cylindrical lights that lit up the sanctuary. I looked back at her and smiled. She was beaming, with the look of Christmas in her eye.

“You look all lit up and bright,” I whispered to her, smiling back.

“I know,” she replied simply.

I turned my attention back to the sermon, though some of my thoughts remained on Emma and her light.  Pretty soon she was again making faces, and moving her arms around as though trying to grab something.  My attention was fully divided now.  Part of me following the sermon; part watching Emma and the light.

She held her face upturned, squinting into the light.  When she noticed that I was watching again, she lowered her face and smiled at me.

“If I look up at the light,” she whispered hoarsely to me, “everything else looks kinda dark.”

I nodded.  Smiling. I could remember doing things like this myself in church when I was a kid.  Anything to find interest during services which seemed to last an eternity. But I also had to smile at the metaphor which was being handed to me, once again, in the hands of a child.

I turned back to the sermon, but most of my thoughts remained on Emma and her light.  Though the entire sanctuary was well-lit and warm this morning, everything else outside was dreary.  And in that well-lit sanctuary, there were a few, like Emma, who were lit slightly more than the rest of us.  Those 12 who were sitting directly under lights.  Though I don’t know that any of the other 11 were as delighted by it as Emma was. They may not have even noticed their special status.

In the next moment she was reaching up with her hands, as though capturing bits of light which might otherwise be falling unused.  Then she’d pour her hands over her face and head.  Like someone would do to wash their face and hair in running water.  I knew she was trying to capture wasted light.  Light that wasn’t falling directly on anyone.  And trying to pour out that captured light onto herself.

When she saw that I was watching her do this she stopped.  I smiled.  She grinned, slightly embarrassed, and shrugged shyly.  Probably hoping that I wouldn’t say something to make her stop.

Truthfully, making her stop hadn’t even occurred to me.  I was totally taken in by the whole thing.  Recognizing that yet again I was being given a gift, through small hands.  Almost like God was whispering, “Psst, look!  Look what I’ve got to show you!”  I teared up a little, and wanted to chuckle at the same time.

“I get it!  Thanks!” I wanted to whisper back.

I glanced over at Emma again.  Sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, face turned upward, eyes squinted shut, smiling.  Radiant, in the light.  And my prayer for her right then was that she always find delight in sitting directly under the Light.  That she always keep her face upturned to It.  Looking directly at that Light.  Because when you do, everything else seems kind of dark by comparison.  And when difficult times hit for her, which I know they will, that she will remember to reach out and grab any extra Light she can find.  Pouring it out on herself.  Being filled with It.  And that she be, always, radiant in the Light.