Christmas Lights, a Junkyard, and the Manger

God is with us in all of life's messy places.

My eyelids sprang open at three in the morning. Christmas morning. I was seven years old. My half brother Joel—already twelve and too cool for kid stuff—lay sleeping soundly next to me on a makeshift cot in the dining room.

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

Fueled by the anticipation of Santa’s arrival and a record-shattering blood sugar level, my whole body had been vibrating with excitement all night. Around nine o’clock my parents had turned out all the lights in a vain attempt to get me to sleep. In the pitch dark I lay counting the minutes impatiently until sometime around midnight the sugar bender I was on finally came to a crashing halt.

But now I was fully alert. A glow seeped out of the living room behind us and poured itself thinly across the dining room floor. A faint, warm light coaxed recognizable shapes out of the darkness: the dining room table, the window frame, the doorway leading out toward the kitchen.

“Santa’s come,” I whispered to Joel.

No response.

I shook his shoulde…