What are the lights for?

Unless you’ve been glued to your library desk, you’ve probably seen the rows of fluorescent bulbs hanging over the streets of London and thought, “is it that time of year already?” Sure, they light up the street a little more, and let’s face it, we need that at a time of year when it gets dark at 4pm, but there must be more to it than that, right?

What if they signify something that lights up more than just the high street? Could they represent a light that illuminates a whole city, country, or even the whole world? Could they even be an image of a light that illuminates the whole of our existence – past, present and future? It sounds crazy, I know. Maybe Macbeth was right: “out, out, brief candle! Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?” What I’m hinting at is a promise made before the beginning of time, with implications that run further into the future than even a PhD physicist can imagine; a promise brought to light that first Christmas.

That first Christmas was nothing like ours. Most of us shell out our student loans to buy people gifts that they probably don’t want – I know I do anyway. We all end up having to fake that look of surprise and awe when we receive presents that don’t turn out to be that iPad 2 we wanted so badly. But what if we got something much better for Christmas? Something worth immeasurably more than we can imagine; something that even the richest person couldn’t afford to give, which would never wear out and you’d never get tired of. Is that what Christmas is all about – presents that knock those new holly adorned socks off your feet?

I think it’s time to really get to know the God that gives us the ultimate gift, to catch up with He who has broken into history

We all know Christmas isn’t really about presents. It’s about spending time with your family: the people who give you full acceptance the moment you walk in the door, as if you were never away. It’s about catching up with all that’s been going on, with everything you’ve missed on your family Skype sessions and those calls you got from your parents while you were in Sainsbury’s. But that is hardly akin to the first Christmas now is it? I mean they didn’t have Skype 2,000 years ago, in a time when people barely left their home town, there was never much catching up to do with family. Hang on a second. Maybe Christmas really is about our catching up with family, and awesome presents and bright lights, which illuminate our existence. That could be what the first Christmas was all about.

Imagine Macbeth going up into his Attic to find his Author. Where would Macbeth find the light which makes sense of his whole story – brief candles, murdering wives and all? But what if Shakespeare wrote himself into his own story, and stepped onto the stage in his own play? Just imagine for a moment that the child that was born, Jesus, was also God himself writing himself into history. Why would God do that? The first Hebrew Christians understood it was because “He is not ashamed to call them brothers. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil”. I think that is the present. The end of death itself. How can we do anything but live when death has lost its power? So we have life. Forever.

I think that changes things, that sheds some real light, not just on Christmas, but on where all our lives are heading. But you know what I love more than a good present? The person who gives it. God has come to earth so that we can really know him; the bible even says that when we accept his gift we are adopted into his family and become his children. I think it’s time to really get to know the God that gives us the ultimate gift, to catch up with He who has broken into history. That is what I shall be thinking about as I look up to those lights strung across London; as I give and receive gifts and as I catch up with my family back home. The last verse of the carol Once in Royal David’s City sums it up perfectly:

And our eyes at last shall see Him, Through His own redeeming love; For that Child so dear and gentle, Is our Lord in heaven above: And He leads His children on, To the place where He is gone.