The Lights in Your House
Light is one of my favorites of all of God’s creations. Saturday was Christmas decorating day, so lights are twinkling all over our house.
Light was one topic of conversation in Ray’s Sunday School class this week. Class member Darlene was back at church for the first time in many weeks. She has just been released from three months as a rehab patient at the local nursing home. The cause was complications from a knee replacement. She was her usual chipper self on Sunday.
As a long-time employee of the nursing home, Darlene has lots of stories–sad ones, sweet ones, and hilarious ones.
It was class member Fran who had a funny (only if it didn’t happen to you) nursing home story on Sunday. A friend of Fran’s told her a story about one of the regular responsibilities staff members had each evening when she worked there several years ago. Each night the staff cleaned residents’ false teeth. A staffer retrieved a patient’s dentures, cleaned them, returned them, and repeated these steps with one patient after another.
One night a new employee efficiently gathered up the dentures–all together. This caused a major problem: whose teeth were whose? Yikes! Fran said it took the local dentist two years to match up all the dentures and patients!
On Sunday Darlene’s story was a sweet one. She mentioned a young family who had recently visited her at the nursing home. She said that the patients light up when they see children.
You have precious lights in your home. You know that because they are a joy to you. However, sometimes it’s easy to forget what a delight they are to people who haven’t ever or haven’t yet lived with children every day and to those of us whose children are grown and out of the house.
Your children are lights to every heart that is still open to their light: grandparents, neighbors, church members, and others. Thank you for sharing your little lights with them. When you spend time with your loved ones this Thanksgiving, you are letting their little lights shine.
Let your light shine before men in such a wayÂ
that they may see your good works,Â
and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 5:16