Learning to See | Letting the Light Shine In

This one is for all my please and perfecters. For my strivers and overachievers. I have GOOD NEWS for you. You don’t have to hustle for God. And those places where you feel flawed or broken or vulnerable? That’s where the Light gets in.

This is what I am celebrating at Christmas. This is what brings me peace and gives me hope. And my prayer is that you experience this same hope and peace from knowing you are deeply loved by God.

This time of year, there is this one time of day that the evening light comes streaming in through my living room window.

This window faces south, but because of the patio on the back side of the house, we rarely get any direct light in this room. 

But this time of year is special. 

This time of year, the evening sun just so happens to set in between the narrow space between two of my neighbor’s houses. And this time of year, that light just so happens to come into the back door of my kitchen and just so happens to shine all the way through my kitchen and make its way into this window in my living room.

I love that.

As I was standing by this window the other day, these lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem came to mind.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

The words ‘forget your perfect offering‘ hit me really hard that day. Because this time of year it’s so easy for me to get wrapped up in trying to make things perfect. Checking things off my to-do list. Overplanning. Overachieving. 

Trust me when I tell you that no one can suck the joy out of something more than me trying to make things special.

I am a flawed soul. I know this. But the GOOD NEWS is that I worship a God who does not expect perfection from me. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It is precisely this brokenness that creates an opening for God’s light and grace and mercy and love. This is where I come face to face with Jesus.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.”

Isaiah 60:1

This is what I am celebrating at Christmas. This is what brings me peace and gives me hope. And my prayer is that you experience this same hope and peace from knowing you are deeply loved by God.

Merry Christmas, dear friends.

Love, Kelly