Hanukkah Day Seven — Seeking Light in the Darkness By Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
In preparing for Passover, the Bible instructs us to get rid of any leavened bread and any products containing yeast from our homes. So on the night before Passover, Jews perform a ritual where we search for those forbidden products. We turn off the lights in our homes and go through our houses with the light of a single candle. Ironically, with all the lights on, it would be easy to miss the small crumbs. But in the darkness, with that one candle serving as a spotlight, we see so much better.
Why are we talking about Passover on Hanukkah? It's because we learn from that Passover ritual how sometimes we see better when darkness accompanies the light. The verse in Micah reads: "Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light." Another version reads: "when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me" (ESV). When in the darkness, that's when we more readily see God as our light.
Think about it. When the lights are all on, we miss seeing so many things. Who takes the time to really notice the color of our food, the expressions on the faces around us, the beauty all around us? But sit by candlelight and everything takes on a certain radiance. We see things in a different way.
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In the same way, when everything is sunny in our lives — when things are going well — we don't always see the miracles that God performs for us every single day. The right person showing up at the right time. The car accident that we unknowingly avoided. God performs miracles for us all the time, but we don't see them. However, in the dark times — when the odds are stacked against us — that's when we see God's providence shining through.
On Hanukkah, we light our candles in darkness. And with those small lights, we are able to see with greater vision than in the brightest of rooms. In fact, tradition teaches that looking at the Hanukkah lights "fixes" our vision. We remember, there in the darkness, how God runs the world and creates miracles in our lives. We recall the miracles of the Jewish defeat over the Greek army and the little flask of oil burning for eight nights. Our vision is restored and we see what we often miss in our day-to-day lives.
Tonight, shine a light on the miracles in your life. Not just the major ones that occurred once, but the ones that occur every single day, the ones that we take for granted. Let's never lose sight of the message of those tiny lights amid the darkness. God is everywhere, if only we would see.
Rabbi Yechiel Ecksteinis the founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which now raises more than $140 million per year, mostly from Christians, to assist Israel and the Jewish people. Since its founding, The Fellowship has raised more than $1.4 billion for this work. The organization has offices in Jerusalem, Chicago, Toronto and Seoul.
