Christmas Reflections

The reflections made by the Christmas tree lights on my wooden floor entrance me. I try to capture them in my digital camera on "Indoor" and "Night Scene" settings - to no avail. The light play defies any human attempt at reproducing it.

Like the light in my daughter's eyes when she suddenly sees her own humor in a word, and her ponytails dance in curls, and her laughter skips in leaps, awakening the sleeping child inside her mother. It defies any camera, and this author's pen.

The lights themselves blur and blend in the camera's eye, not like the blur and definition on my floor, but something like the blur and run in the water I suddenly find in these human eyes, remembering a tiny tot's joy.

The shadows on my floor are clearer than the light, making sticks and branches out of far tinier needles, well-defined. They are in exact contrast to their counterparts in the tree, where lights are bright and dark needles blur.

Is that like Heaven?

Do angels and saints shine sharply bright in Heaven, only to blur on earth? Do the sharp pains of earth blur and soften in Heaven when we come there at last? Do the great, shining, good things of God in Heaven show up here on earth simply as rather ineffectual mirrors of Him, while the deep, dark, stabbing shadows of the evil one stand out in high definition here, focusing our attention on them instead of that great, good God?

But the scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadows,
Keeping watch above His own.

Amen! May your New Year be filled with the sure knowledge of God standing within your shadows, keeping watch over you and yours.

Simply,
Patty