Sometimes a Little Light Is All You Need
By: Sara Dagen
Tags: Christianity, Relationships, Encouragement, Love, Friendship

“I know you’re probably in bed, but did you leave a nightlight in the bathroom?”

I had thought about that little light in my jumbled attempts to sleep last night, my brain spinning with all the activity of the weekend. Pamela’s text message confirmed it. I had left my nightlight at her house.

When I had started traveling for work years ago, I had purchased an inexpensive nightlight to take with me for those dark hotel bathrooms. Like most women in their 50s (or so I hear), I get up in the night to “use the facilities.” Turning on a bright light to do so is usually enough to trigger a level of awakeness that keeps me from falling asleep when I return to my bed.

I keep the little LED nightlight in my travel bag for that purpose. Two nights ago while spending the night with my high-school friend and her family, I hadn’t thought to plug in my nightlight and experienced that struggle to return to sleep after my visit to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. So I plugged in my nightlight to make the second night better, and yesterday as I packed to leave, though I looked at the light a number of times and told myself not to forget it, I forgot it. (I think women in their 50s do that, too.)

Hence Pamela’s text message of 8:41 p.m. (And, yes, I was in bed.)

As I swam this morning, I thought of that little light left behind. When I had plugged it into the socket in the bathroom lit by morning sunlight, the light seemed faint. But in the middle of the night, that little light was just enough to guide me without offending my sleepy senses. It wasn’t jarring, just instructive.

“This little light of mine,

I’m gonna let it shine.”

Unbidden, those lyrics to that Sunday school song I caroled as a child and with my own children came to mind. When we were little, we often thought that the light we had to offer was small — but we were going to shine it all we could. To boldly shine wherever we were.

I am thinking of “this little light” in a different way today. Now that I am older, I realize that even a tiny light in great darkness makes a difference.

Sometimes that is preferable in our spiritual lives, as well as in our sleep-interruptus bathroom visits.

At various times in my spiritual walk, I’ve had times when overpowering light — perhaps direct confrontation, heavy preaching, correction, or even impassioned, loving concern — was so jarring it was unproductive. But the little light in the darkness — Christian music; a story, testimony, or unintended conversation; a timely word or a note or loving act — reached my heart like a glaring light never could.

It reminds me of the time God told the prophet Elijah to go stand on the mountain in His presence because he was going to pass by him. As Elijah waited, a whirlwind tore at the mountain, an earthquake followed, and a fire followed that. God was not in those mighty events. After the fire, however, Elijah heard a gentle whisper, and he knew that God was in that whisper (1 Kings 19:11–13).

A nightlight is like a whisper of light. Its little light guides me in the night. It even illuminates the location of the light switch, should I have the desire for more light.

Sometimes we need to be a nightlight for others, a gentle, love-filled guide in a difficult time.

Rather than shining a bright light on another’s sin or pronouncing the “right way” out of a problem, we need to listen and love. Sometimes that means words, sometimes that means ice cream.

Be a praying nightlight, always praying. And illuminate the source of full light, the Word of God, as in the Bible and the Word made flesh, Jesus.

I call my friend Pamela “my sunshine friend”; I even wrote her a poem titled that when we were young, and she hung it on her wall. Pam is not what you’d call a nightlight; that girl is pure brightness and light and joy if ever a person could be. She and her family shine Jesus in everything they do.

But like that whisper of light, that nightlight, my sunny friend Pamela listened and loved and shared her time with me — our first sleepover in 30 years! (And, yes, we had ice cream.)