Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

faith & spirituality

The difference lighting a candle makes

Sometimes I wake early when the world is still dark. I stumble, half-awake, to the kitchen, then to the living room, gathering supplies, turning on as few lights as possible. I strike a match and watch it burn, lighting a candle, turning off lights. I sit in the darkness with the glow of this small solitary flame encircling me.

I watch. And I pray.

—

There are many things to pray for these days. Every day, but maybe I am just more aware now than I have been before.

There is a community, several in fact, near our hometown, crushed by an epic storm that took life and property and left only destruction. It is close enough to where we grew up that I recognize towns and places. And I ache for the losses and the uphill battle of restoration that awaits.

There is a woman facing a cancer diagnosis, not her first, and it doesn’t look good. But she is fighting back, refusing to give in a single day before the fight is over. I haven’t seen her in years but I know the fight is in her. And I ache for the hard days ahead.

There is another woman fighting to get back to the life she knew. Her family is with her but they are weary, I’m sure, and the battle is long.

I ache because I can’t fix anything and all the things I could do feel so small.

What can I do?

What difference would it make?

So I end up overwhelmed, doing nothing at all.

—

A few years ago, my husband and I visited a Catholic shrine in the suburbs of Chicago. We are not Catholic, but we are increasingly interested in the old ways. Ancient practices. Orthodox traditions. The things that often are said with distaste in our evangelical circles because they are viewed as ritual, without meaning.

That day, though, I remember feeling surrounded by the holy. Holy can be anywhere and everywhere, and sure there was plenty of human there that day, too, but I was awed. And there were candles flaming, lit for those who needed prayer, a miracle.

I lit one that day, and now I can’t remember why, but there was something significant about lighting a candle, piercing the darkness with a flame of light.

How long the candle burns, I don’t know, and yes, I put in some money to offset the cost of the candle. Perhaps it burns, still.

—

I pray, yes, and sometimes I forget to pray. I care, and sometimes I forget to show I care.

I so want to pray and yet I am overwhelmed by the needs. Could I ever pray enough for all of them?

The answer, of course, is no, I couldn’t and I can’t.

But is there more to prayer? Is there more than whispers, spoken words, names on a list?

I am a tactile person in a tactile world and sometimes praying seems like not enough. Has it made any difference?

But the candle, the light in the darkness, this means something to me. It is an act I can see and when combined with my words might it make a difference?

I’m not yet sure how to make this a practice. I cannot keep candles burning in my house all the time, but could I light a candle more often?

I want to push back the darkness with light, even if the light is small. And maybe that’s  just what my prayers are. Tiny little lights in the dark world, like stars in the heavens shining against a backdrop of black.

Josh Felise | Creative Commons | via unsplash

Josh Felise | Creative Commons | via unsplash

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” the adage says. I believe it’s okay to curse the darkness, to grieve the losses and even ask “why, God?” but to stay there is to let the darkness overcome.

Curse the darkness, then light a candle or whatever that means for you. Send a card. Speak a life-giving word. Encourage. Lift up.

There is far too much light left in the world to let the darkness win.

Look for the light.

Be the light.

Light your candle and let it burn.

What do you think of the practice of lighting a candle for prayer?

How can you be light in the world?

For the days when hope is too hard {and a preview of A.D. The Bible Continues}

So, it’s Holy Week, and a lot of people are writing about it, and I’m not sure I have anything meaningful to say about it. In fact, sometimes, I’m not sure what to do with Holy Week. I’m still relatively new to the church calendar and its seasons and I always want Lent and Holy Week to be special and sacred and yet I often fail to plan for either one.

I find myself wondering during Holy Week why we continue to tell the story of these days. Why we commemorate Good Friday when we know how it ends on Easter. And I know there is purpose in the telling and telling again because we forget and we need to pause and remember. But there always seems to be a lot of pressure to tell the story in a new way, to host an event or draw a crowd. Easter is a BIG DEAL for Christians and churches and it lasts far beyond Sunday morning, though I forget that, too.

In the midst of regular life–school and work and grocery shopping and laundry–Holy Week breaks in.

It’s a curious story from start to finish. The shouts of “hosanna.” The washing of feet. The breaking of bread. The talk of a new covenant. The betrayal. The trial. The crucifixion and death. The hopelessness and the waiting. The miraculous resurrection. It’s an emotional roller coaster when you think about how it played out the first time.

It helps me to remember that life is like that, too. Expectations. Thrills. Disappointments. Death of dreams. Questions and doubts. Miracles. Unimaginable newness.

I have to look hard in the Gospels to find those emotions and themes. Sometimes the story is too familiar.

So, I’m grateful when creative people can take familiar stories and rethink them. I’ve mentioned this before with biblical fiction books. And we recently had the chance to visit Sight and Sound Theatre in Lancaster to see Moses on stage. I come away from these experiences with a better understanding of biblical times.

And it happened again this week when I received the chance to watch the first episode of the upcoming TV series “A.D. The Bible Continues” through a perk from Klout.

Now, I missed the previous TV series about the Bible, but I heard great things about it. This is the continuation from Mark Burnett, Roma Downey and company, and while I was a bit skeptical (because sometimes the Bible on the big screen is cheesy or overly dramatic or just terribly done), I have to say that if the first episode is an indicator, then this will be a good series. The show premieres on Sunday on NBC, which is not coincidental timing, I’m sure, being that it is Easter, but the televised story begins on Good Friday.

I almost wish you could watch it before Sunday because the horror, shame and despair of Good Friday and the following day come through. The disciples are beyond disappointed. Confused. Unable to hope even when Mary begs them to wait at least three days before giving up. It is powerful and beautiful. I love seeing historical settings as they might have been. They help me to fill in the details the Bible leaves out and give me access to a world I otherwise couldn’t enter.

Like the clothing the elite women (Pilate’s wife and the High Priest’s wife) wear. It’s colorful and extravagant, almost reminiscent of medieval clothing. I forget that the rich and powerful would dress differently than the others, even in a culture from 2,000 years ago. The diversity of characters reminds me that it was a diverse culture. Not primarily Caucasian. And not all young or old. Peter and John and mother Mary and Mary Magdalene all look different than I would have imagined them. And that’s a good thing.

And the words that aren’t recorded in the Bible give depth to the characters. One line that sticks out to me is one Peter says the day after Jesus is crucified.

What difference does any of this now make that he’s dead?

This is the question I must ask myself. What difference does Jesus’ death make? And what difference does His resurrection make? I look forward to watching the second episode because the first ends on a hopeful note but doesn’t take us all the way there.

Hope is hard sometimes, especially when all we see is death and chaos. I can hardly read news stories or scroll through Facebook without feeling like the world is one super messed up place and what does my faith matter anyway? What difference does it make?

Holy Week reminds me that despair is not the end of the story. That hope is hard when you don’t know the ending. But hope and love and life are coming and I can be a part of that story.

I don’t know where this series is going to go, but I know from reading the New Testament that the resurrection doesn’t mean happily ever after, either. If anything, the disciples’ lives become more difficult. But because they have a reason, because they see the difference Jesus’ life and death and resurrection make, they no longer live without hope.

That is why we tell and retell the story. Because we live in a world without a lot of hope. And we who believe Christ died and Christ is risen are hope-bearers in this world.

Hope, even when it’s hard, makes all the difference.

For more about the TV series, go to http://www.nbc.com/ad-the-bible-continues.