Small Lanterns in the Dark

I am reminded that there are still those small lanterns burning in the world, no matter how dark things become. It was 8:45 p.m. on May 30th, two years ago. I had about thirty minutes left before nightfall, and I had to head to Walmart. All day I had put it off, as I buried myself in writing a treatise against metamodern Christianity that no one would likely ever read. School was out for the summer, and I should feel free, but I didn't feel free at all. It had been a difficult and disillusioning year, and this was my way of detoxing. All the pretense, all the pretty worldliness that clutters up the truth, all the glitz of hyper-grace in these murky times, had to be exposed and disentangled from my thinking. Why can't a Christian school be Christian? What was I even doing there? I couldn't be myself, and in a school deeply set in its ways, it seemed too late to make a difference.

Twilight was settling in, and now I had to hurry.  I was glad to get out of the house, and I felt somewhat refreshed just from walking through the store.  Imagine that at Walmart! I scurried to put some essential groceries in my cart, after adding minutes to my phone, and I wheeled towards the checkout with hopes of leaving before real darkness set in.  There weren’t too many people in line, thankfully, just two customers, one already checking out, and a cute little old lady maybe eighty-five years old right ahead of me.  I kept my cart courteously away from her in the once-mandated COVID distance, but when her turn came, I found myself closely watching her. 

She wasn’t very tall and her hair was a dull grey-white, thinning on top; her cheeks were pinkish and wrinkly, but her every movement was meek and graceful.  As she was picking coins out of her billfold and talking to the cashier, I noticed that her hands were thick and gnarly like someone who has arthritis.  But it was her face itself that arrested me.  Her frail little body seemed to have been charged with energy by the sheer look in her eyes—a look of sweet humor and courage—a loving twinkle of time-tested faith.  I could not take my eyes from her.  She had one of the sweetest faces I had ever seen.  Had I even the slightest opportunity to speak to her, I would without a doubt have asked her if she was a Christian.  She was, in a word, radiant.  

Then I found myself praying for her safety going back to her car, for she was alone, and I swiftly thought of my own late precious mother, whose defining trait in all her unbelievable trials had been her radiance in Christ.  Tears filled my eyes as I set my groceries on the conveyor belt.  This would be my goal, no matter what happened to me, no matter how burdened my spirit would become with things like I had written about that day. My one defining trait must be my radiance.  If this was not so now, why not? I would carry on my mother's light in this ever-dimming landscape so devoid of truth. How my mother's eyes, even through her tears, would shine with a faraway gleam, as if she glimpsed the glory lurking just beyond the Gate. And then one day it was all over.  The Lord swept her home, and I was there to witness. Her radiance stayed with her to the very end.

At what point had my mother's own trials transposed into song?  I remembered that this radiance of hers was not always so. What changed? There had been a time after her own mother's death that her burdens became too great to bear--false accusations, estrangements through no fault of her own, a stolen inheritance that should have been hers, letters, lawyers, and many, many prayers with my caring father. And then one day, the Lord broke through the clouds, lifting my mother's spirit in a sudden surprise of joy as she was working around the house. As if in the voice of her own mother, she felt rather than heard the words, "Oh, Margaret! If you only knew! It's wonderful! Just wonderful!" Was this a vision? My mother never claimed as much, but how thin, after all, is the vapor between kindred spirits of two worlds? I don't think we know.

So came about my mother's shining face. After she and my father retired and moved away, people at church, sometimes people she barely knew, would come up to her and marvel at her radiant smile. After her death, I found an account in her journal describing her unusual experience that day. She told so humbly--my godly mother--how the Lord had cleansed her of all that defiles--her grief, her heartache, her bitter disappointment, old resentments, and temptations to blame. She had learned to cast her cares, living for her Lord's approval alone. Yes, this was the secret to my mother's radiance.

And what of this other sweet little lady with crippled hands and twinkling eyes at Walmart? What miracles of grace did her face have to tell? And to think I would not have seen her, had I gone sooner. Perhaps the Lord was showing me that, no matter how late the times, He still sends His small lanterns in the dark.