Have you ever been in a dark, dark room and lit a single candle?
I did that recently.

During a recent staff meeting we were encouraged to take an hour for private prayer… and were given the text of John 1:1-9, and a candle. Wanting to ensure my privacy I made my way downstairs, and into the fireside room, a room that is quite large, large enough to fit about 120 people around tables. It was the darkest room I could think of without going into a closet. I sat down at one end of the room, took my candle in one hand, and lit it. At once I was amazed at two things: the brightness of the light as I held it in my hand, and the darkness of the room surrounding it.

When I was holding the candle… with it only a foot or two from my eyes, the room around was almost invisible. The light so affected my eyes that I could only see a few feet around me, so bright was that candle, so strongly it took over my vision and allowed me to see only the light. Close to the candle, it was warm and hopeful… but as I placed it on the ground and walked further and further away from it’s warmth... beyond the edges of the circle of its light, darkness overtook me. The darkness overtook me and I was alone at the opposite end of the room in what looked and felt like a place of hopelessness and despair.

It might sound crazy to you. Why all this talk of despair and hopelessness? It’s only the darkness of the room. And yet that is what I felt. Those were the emotions that had been gnawing away at the edges of my consciousness that day and the whole week before. In the darkness I could only see the poverty of my life, the fear and sadness in my heart and the weariness of my eyes. Although I could see the beckoning light at the other end of the room, there was an odd desire to remain in the darkness… to remain in my place of sadness and fear, and take up residence there. But the candle remained.

As I drew closer to the beginning of its circle of influence I found that remaining on the outside of that light was not enough. I longed to move closer. I longed to move to where I could really feel the warmth of it’s light. The edges of the circle were not enough… the mid-point leading to the candle was not enough. Although I knew that my vision would be changed, that I would not be able to see the darkness of the room if I moved any closer, still the candle drew me to it.

Lifting it up, holding it in my hand, my face warmed by it’s heat, my face illuminated by it’s light… I didn’t want my hour of prayer to end. I wanted to stay with my light. But my time was up, and so, not wanting to extinguish the light, I walked carefully to the stairs and gingerly made my way back to the staff room. I thought that maybe I would be thought of as silly, as sentimental to still have my candle lit… but when I arrived I was stunned to see that not one other person extinguished their candle.

Once we had tasted the power and peace of its light, not one of us could be parted from it.