A Christmas Light Tangent

Tonight Evansville was wet. As we drove home from worship rain gushed from the sky and streamed down our windows like a never ending car wash. While driving past the neighborhood where Sarah grew up, the wavy distorted flicker of a house lit up for Christmas caught her eye through the windshield and water.

“Let’s drive through and look at Christmas lights,” Sarah says. The worst possible night for such a venture.

Our windshield wipers groaned under the strain of the relentless shower. Then, for just a moment, the rain let up and we saw the dazzle of beautiful shrubbery strung with artful lighting as well as the haphazard kitsch of inflatable snowmen and loosely strung chords shaking violently in the storm.

Each one in the family pointed out their favorites.

Mine wasn’t a decoration at all. It was the inconvenience of the moment and the beauty of sacrifice creating togetherness.