The filament glowed a soft gold and the little light bulb blinked awake once more. She was out of the storage box and onto the tree again! An eternity seemed to pass every time she and her kin were tangled and confined to musty blackness between Christmases, so the little light bulb promised herself that she would not miss a single opportunity to shine this year. Her body warmed and shone forth with the radiance that powered her heart, and she greeted the season that gave her such purpose and delight. She beamed at the hanging of the other decorations that brought beauty around her and twinkled back her light. She again saw the glowing faces of children, who, although a little older than when she saw them last, looked at her and her stringed community with awe. She knew on Christmas morning she would bask in the squeals of delight as presents were opened in a flurry of tossed paper, and she would witness the hugs that seemed as warm as she felt at her core. And throughout the season there would be songs, oh the songs that would be sung! Music emanating in sound waves would pass over her and through her, and she would flicker her best attempt at joining in the melody. She wasn’t going to miss this year for anything.
She looked around the string and saw the familiar twinkles of her kin. Each blinked a hello to one another in turn. She blinked her own greeting to her neighbor on her right but then turned to her left and dimmed slightly in shock. This neighboring light sat dark and cold, no beams, no warmth, not even a faint glow in the core. She flashed repeatedly, hoping her neighbor was just asleep, but nothing. No response. No light. Though her own light remained bright, she felt a coldness set in. She quivered and cried.
This grief was too much for a little lightbulb to fully comprehend. Her sorrow was at the loss of a companion, but this gloom was also made greater by something so sad happening now, during the time she looked forward to all year—the season that was meant to be so bright now felt extinguished.
But her mourning was also for herself, because the burning out of that light was a foreshadowing of her own future. She was reminded that one day, who could know when, her light would twinkle for the last time and would burn out too.
A child’s bright face appeared, but then their expression changed to confusion. They pointed to the burnt-out light and said something to the large man, who came close too. The man reached his large hands up and extracted the spent bulb. He threw it in the trash and then plunged his hands into the storage box, pulling out a small container of newer looking bulbs and placing one into the empty bulb socket. The bright blaze of the new bulb hurt the little light bulb’s senses, but what was of greater pain was seeing how easy it was to replace something like her. She looked around, hoping to see that another of the lights on the string felt the loss that she felt, but the other lights continued to blink on unaware. How could they? How could they shine so when there was such darkness in their midst? How could they gleam when they all knew that one day they all would burn out too? What right did they have to be joyful in the face of such a fate? How could a season with so much darkness claim to be so joyful and bright? And the more the light sank into her despair, the dimmer her own light became.
But before her light could fade out completely, she saw it glint off an ornament that had never been placed next to her before. She couldn’t quite make it out, so she brightened slightly just to see what it was. A painted ornament of a poor man and woman huddled around a baby laying in a pile of straw as the cold night surrounded them. The little light didn’t know much about humans, but she had watched her own humans year to year from her place on the tree. On her first Christmas with them there were only two big people, but then the next Christmas had a third—a small one like the one on the painted ornament. She saw how the man and the woman would concern themselves with the warmth and safety of their new little one. She saw the fear in their eyes when the heat went out and they all huddled together in the living room, bound with blankets, keeping their baby between them until another human came inside the home and went down to that musty basement before heat reemerged from the vents again, much to the two big people’s relief. But in their worry, they had looked very much like this painted ornament next to her. The man and the woman in the picture too must have felt so scared, worried that the little baby may burn out too.
But there was something different about this baby. The painted image depicted a glow around the baby’s head, a circle of radiant light. The baby’s reflected glow shone off of the parent’s faces as they looked down on the child. How could this be? She had never seen a human shining like her and her kin in the way that this baby was beaming through in the darkness. How could that light burn so bright even when all around it was so bleak? The little light could not answer that, but something compelled her to keep looking at that baby, not the darkness. And the more she did, the more she wondered, the more she pondered this mystery—slowly but surely, without her even realizing it, her light began to burn a little brighter and brighter once again.
The featured image, “A Candle in the Dark,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Adam Nettesheim is Director of Fellowship for The Cultivating Project, and a columnist for Cultivating magazine. Through writing and illustrating, Adam seeks to pull on the golden thread that leads us Homeward. Adam is a ‘Multi-Media Specialist’ by day at a municipality in Colorado but his most important (and favorite) work is husband to his wife Sarah and father to his 3 children.
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