Jane spends considerable time celebrating the festival of light, and she openly confesses that in our world today, people need big doses of spiritual light of God’s knowledge to live a life of peace and joy and spread it to others as well.
Living things need light to flourish, to find clarity, direction and purpose, and Jane has seen this in the self-sacrificial love revealed in the life of Jesus Christ.
Jane recognises that God’s light touches every human being, for all are created in God’s image and likeness.
And all need to be loved and served. She also knows that human passions, emotions and desires, created by divine activity, give us the capacity to express love, which is a gracious gift from God. Jane is so grateful that her parents conceived her in love., nurtured her in love from the moment of conception, and her mother carried her to full term and then brought forth into the world through much labour pain, exhibiting a truly selfless love. We receive love and respond to and develop love. Yet, when we see the darkness that prevails in the world, we realise that we have abused our passions, emotions and desires, and darkness has engulfed our world in violence, selfishness, and lack of compassion towards the suffering world.
As Jane looks back with a grateful heart, she celebrates that Jesus Christ came as the world’s light, but she also recognises that people did not want the light. Sadly, the world is inclined to love darkness. Jane prays that the eternal life Jesus freely offers to all who turn to him in faith will make them ambassadors of light.
It’s better to burn a candle than to curse darkness. Jane’s prayer and hope is that the light she found in Christ continues to make her life a blessing for others. Let’s reach out in love to be a light of life and love to a suffering world groping in darkness.