During my first week in college, I met a new friend. Renae is a Pittsburgh native. While the fall colors were still beautiful, we rode a bus from State College to Pittsburgh and spent a weekend with her family. 

My parents were big fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Every summer we traveled to the city to catch a few baseball games.  I was familiar with the sights and sounds of Pittsburgh. 

During the spring, Renae came to my family’s home, in the Allegheny mountains of Appalachia. Tioga County Pennsylvania is about 25 percent larger than Tarrant County. There are well over two million living in Tarrant County. And only 40,000 people live in Tioga County. Fewer people live in Tioga County than the neighborhood of Wedgwood.

In other words, there are very few people and they are spread across a very large area.

On Friday evening, Renae and I decided to go for a walk. As we walked along a dirt road, Renae became very quiet. I asked if there was something on her mind. And she responded, in a whisper, “It’s very dark here.”

She was unnerved by the darkness. We had to abandon the walk. For Renae, it wasn’t the stuff she could see that troubled her. It was what she imagined the darkness hid from her sight that was frightening.

We are preoccupied by the things that go bump in the night. If you Google “shortest day of the year,” Google will tell you that December 21 will be the shortest day of 2023. Yet, we know that all days in our system of time have 24 hours.

Of course, what we really mean when we talk about the shortest day is the day with the least amount of sunlight.

In the fourth century, the Church began celebrating the Incarnation of Christ (Christmas) on the Sunday closest to the shortest day. Into the longest night, the Light of Christ awakens dawn. Not the dawn of sunshine. But the dawn of reawakening: to God’s presence among us.

This is the awakening Advent prepares us to receive. Light enters our world, and the darkness does not overcome it.

As Renae and I walked home, I pointed out the mercury vapor lights that dotted the hillsides. Farmers use these lamps to light their way from the house to the barn. But to me, each of those lights represented a family—the Smiths, the Beards, the Doans. While the lights were too far away to brighten our footpath, they were reassuring to me that I was not alone. I knew that I could walk to any of those farms if I needed help.

For the next few moments, pause to wonder:

Who are the points of light in your life in this moment? 

And for whom are you a point light?