It’s Christmas Eve morning. I woke up early thinking about a message I am preaching one week from today. I climbed out of bed and slowly made my way downstairs in the dark. Something I’m prone to do this time of year.

First light the candle. Then plug in the small table tree. Finally plug in the big family tree.

There is something about the light and the darkness in these moments. The pitch black outside while the tree lights twinkle in the window and reflect hope back to the world.

I remember being 16 and knowing all the things. Somehow after being picked up from my flight from Alabama to Wichita to visit my grandparents, we ended up with a flat tire on a gravel road in wheat field Kansas. No cell phones at that time. No flashlight. Just my grandma, aunt and a bunch of kids and of course me in a station wagon. Realizing it could be all night before someone came by, my aunt and I started walking down the road toward my other aunt’s farm home. It was dark. In my over imagination snakes lurked everywhere so I made a lot of noise and we laughed and talked and scared all the snakes away. It felt like forever in the darkness. Hoping that around the next corner there would be light. And suddenly we saw it. . . a faint light in a window. Our gait quickened as we  turned the corner and half ran down the driveway to the home that held all the hope we needed.

Maybe you are in the darkness this morning. Maybe this year has felt like that darkness. You desperately need a light in a window somewhere.

It was 24 years ago today that my second son made a surprise visit into the world. He was nine weeks early and there was an emergency C-section and he was whisked away as soon as my eyes caught sight of him. The nurse taped Polaroid pictures of him by my bed. I was in and out of sleep pumped up on the drugs but every time I woke I looked at the pictures of him hooked up to wires and tubes and contraptions and wondered if I would ever hold him. Wondered if he would make it. Wondered if anyone was keeping secrets from me.

The next afternoon the door to my room swung open. In walked Dr. Aulds, my OB, and his whole family all dressed up- coming from the Christmas service at their church. They brought gifts. Baby clothes. They stood around the bed and talked and laughed and encouraged. I can still see his teen age daughters, one whom I had taught math, in their red dresses with the puffy sleeves. Then they were gone. I spread the tiny preemie clothes out on my lap and hope soared through me. Dr. Aulds would not have brought  clothes for my baby unless he thought the baby would live. In that moment the Aulds family held hope for me when the darkness seemed so deep.

Maybe today you can’t find the hope you need. Perhaps you need someone to hold that hope for you for a bit until you are ready to carry it yourself.

This morning I am thinking of all those who have lost loved ones this year. All those who are mourning. All those who have been so disappointed. Those who have had relationships severed and those who have had people walk out. I am thinking of those who have been diagnosed with the unthinkable and are trying to fight but the fight seems so hard and perhaps even impossible. I am thinking of those who are lonely. Both those who are truly alone and those who are surrounded by people but still feel that ache of loneliness.  I’m looking at my tree with the light piercing the darkness and I’m believing for you that there is hope. And I am holding hope for you.

I will hold the hope until you can reach out and take it and carry it for yourself.