Genesis 1:1-5

She lay awake, struggling to communicate with God, knowing that God knew what she wanted to say, but trying to put her feelings …? Was it depression? Or was she just tired, after working all day and then coming home to feed the cattle, care for her sick husband, fix supper, do the dishes, wash clothes, and …?

The news. Maybe she shouldn’t listen to the news before she went to bed. It was never good. The COVID. More and more people were dying every day. Every twenty minutes, they said. She wondered what city was being wiped off the map.

The politics. She had never claimed any particular party. She was frustrated with both of them. Whatever one party wanted, the other refused, even though under another president, that was what they claimed to want. It was like the Hatfields and the McCoys. What would be left of their democracy when this was over? Why couldn’t they work together, like they used to when she was younger?

The women’s club she belonged to, everyone seemed to take one side or the other, mostly one side. It was hard to keep them on Bible study. Maybe she would just quit and let someone else take over. That one evening a week—that had been a special time, like family, but not now.

The weather. She didn’t remember the last time it rained. Would their well run dry? They did their best to conserve the house water, but the cattle … they had to have water, especially with the grass so dry. How much longer would the pasture last? Would they have to start selling cows? Or sell the calves early?

As her thoughts dug deeper, she began to question what she was contributing to the world. “Make this world a better place” was the motto her mother had lived by. But how was she, her mother’s daughter, making the world better? People were still starving, dying of COVID, hating each other because of their beliefs. What difference was she making?

Every night she prayed, but nothing changed. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed. Not the monster dreams of childhood, but the fears of adulthood—losing her job, losing the farm, her husband dying. One night she even dreamed that the church burned down.

This particular night, she could not sleep. She slipped out of bed, put on her slippers, and went into the kitchen. She opened her Bible to the bookmark that was keeping track of reading through the scriptures from beginning to end.

Her eyes saw the words, but her brain did not process them. It simply would not let her relax. She realized that her foot was tapping a rhythm, tapping to the beat of a song in her head. She listened to the words: “in this world of darkness, we must shine: you in your bright corner, and I in mine.”

Bright corner? There was nothing bright in her corner, nothing bright at all. She was just one little grain of sand in the vast beach where her parents had lived. Just one drop of water in that great ocean. She wasn’t even a ray of sunshine. What is sunshine made of? Not grains or drops. Whatever, she didn’t feel a molecule of bright sunshine.

Something in the back of her head argued. No, it’s not “bright.” It’s “small.” But the other half defended “bright.” She went over to the piano and picked up her oldest hymnal, the one that might have the song in it. She found the first line in the index and turned to the page. Whispering, so as not to awaken her husband, she read the line: “You in your smallcorner, and I in mine.”

Small. Her corner doesn’t have to be bright. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be smart. It doesn’t have to be great. It doesn’t have to be important … that wouldn’t fit, anyway. That’s three syllables, and it would not fit in the song.

As she closed her hymnbook and passed a window on her way to bed, she noticed the lights in the distance. Yard lights for farms a couple miles away. Small lights. Not like the airport lights she remembered seeing in the big city, beacons that circled the sky guiding in the airliners carrying people to their destinations. No, these lights in her window were tiny, small.

She looked out the window on the adjacent wall. She could see the town. Rows of streetlights. At night, when she drove through town, they lit the way in front of her. She could drive in town without her headlights because those lights, so tiny in the distance, lit her path.

Small lights accomplishing something, individually, but even more so collectively.

She remembered something from her geometry class many years ago. The more sides a figure has, the more corners it has, the more stable it is. Each corner is only a small part of the whole figure, but each corner adds to its strength.

And, she thought, if each person shines in their small corner, how bright must the figure be! Like millions of little candles burning in the night.

She went back to bed and slept without dreaming.

***

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2). A great light made up of little candles, small candles.

Candles, not beacons. You’ve heard that saying, “You don’t have to save the world. That’s already been done. Jesus did that a long time ago.” All we need to do is light our corner. A light warms. A light guides our way. A light comforts. A light reflects a God who loved the whole world enough to send us Jesus—Jesus, the one who told us to love God and to love our neighbor, the other person, the one we disagree with, the one we consider to be our enemy.

And that great light is the sum of each of our small lights. You in your small corner and I in mine.

(Comments to Carolyn through her website at http://wimtg.com/.)