Sometimes the only way to stay standing is to lash yourself to SomeOne stronger.

Ann Voskamp remembers when her sister cut down a pine one Christmas. It was crooked, so they tied it to the bannister of the stairs. Ann writes at A Holy Experience,

Sometimes the only way to stay standing is to lash yourself to SomeOne stronger.

...That’s what drove the kid sister out of a broken and bruising home and across pitch black fields to the woods for a tree to haul home — she had desperately needed to string up light.

...More than gifts, the kid had needed meaning.

Of all the things we want, what we want most is meaning.

...Standing there at the prayer table, it only takes me a minute to simply light a candle in the middle of a week that moves directly from the tradition of Giving Thanks to God —- to the tradition of Advent and Wanting and Waiting for More of God.

...Because I wish I could somehow go back across our darkened farm fields and find my little kid sister out there in the cold and give her that —

a Coming and a Christmas that was so glorious you couldn’t unwrap it in a day or two, but you had to unwrap it over weeks —-

...Yeah, let the snow keep falling if it wants.

Let the clock tick time brave into the night.

Let the stars shimmer defiant hope over everywhere that’s dark.

The Lord knows we all need it —

Let this be a Christmas full of His Light, a Christmas full of Meaning, because The Perfect Christmas Gift has Meaning.

Because the Light, it can’t be stopped and it won’t be stopped —

In through the broken-hearted cracks of the world, in through all our shards —

even now, the light comes in like a benediction.

The Light always Coming.

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