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Warren’s Wanderings…
Christmas Eve and Candlelight, accompanied by Silent Night...they just seems to go together. All kinds of memories flood over me as I stand in a sanctuary, bathed in the glow of 200 or so candles. Yet the most important thing that I remember is thatJesus is the light of the world. John the evangelist reminds us that "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it." George Everett Ross tells of another kind of lighting tradition that we can take from Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve—I shall always remember a certain Idaho holiday at Sun Valley. The snow that night was deep and crisp. We had gone for the annual ceremony of the lighting of the ski slope. At the top of a particular mountain, as we looked at it from the lodge, we could see a faint light, and then another and then a lot of them. Gradually, down the slope the skiers with their torches came and, as they descended, they lighted other torches along the way, until a lovely design of warm, glowing light stretched across the frozen snow. We could not see the torchbearers, but we could see the progress of the light. I hold that image, my friends, in my mind as an image of the Christian Church. We ourselves may not be seen. No distant preacher will use our name. But believe this: Each one of us has a light to carry and a torch to light. All that matters is whether we leave some light behind us as we go. As we move on into 2011 let us remember that not only do we stand in the light of a legacy left to us, we are the ones who are to carry the light forward and leave some light behind us as well.
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