“Beauty will save the world,” wrote Fyidor Dostoyevsky, one of my favorite writers and a literary role model.
He must’ve been thinking about a worship service like our candle light service tonight when he wrote those words.
My favorite moment in the service came when a little baby beside me cooed, cried, giggled, wiggled, squirmed, yelled and cried again.
His mommy held him close, rocked him, cuddled him, and walked around the sanctuary with him through it all.
“That must have been what Mary did on her first night with baby Jesus,” I thought to myself.
I smiled a Trevor smile.
As the candle lighting began, and his mommy leaned her candle into the flicker of the flame from her neighbor’s candle, I saw an astonishing sight.
The baby was perfectly still.
He stared at the candle
The light of danced in his little, brown eyes.
I knew in that very moment Silent Night, Holy Night.
It was beautiful.
Oh so beautiful.
Dostoyevsky woul’ve loved it,
I loved it
Dostoyevsky would’ve understood it.
I understood it.
And was deeply and widely moved.
As we rose from our pews to leave the sanctuary, I looked at the mommy and said, “I loved watching and listening to your little guy.”
“I’m sorry he made so much noise,” she apologized.
“Please,” I said, “Don’t apologize. I absolutely, positively loved it. You know what? He reminded me of my boys when they were that age in this service. That memory warmed my heart. Thank you. And Merry Christmas .
Amen.
Once in Royal Davids’s City (verse 2 - my favorite)
He came down to earth from heaven
who is God and Lord of all,
and his shelter was a stable,
and his cradle was a stall.
With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
lived on earth our savior holy.
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