On Thursday nights, I eat dinner with one of the houses in the L’Arche London Community. Recently, I’ve started helping to facilitate prayer before dinner. “Helping to facilitate” might even be a bit generous for my role– really, one of the women who lives in the home, “Ellen,” leads. I just help light the candles, and ask Ellen to start the Lord’s prayer and the songs. These ten or so minutes of prayer are becoming one of the most precious moments in my week.

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” ~John 8:12

As I prepared for prayer today, I thought about what is important to Ellen. For prayers, she always loves to have her cross, her incense, and her candle. As I prayed earlier this morning in preparation for the prayer this evening, Jesus as the “light of the world” came to me, and so did Ellen’s candle.

Ellen is blind. I’ve always known this about her in a logical sense, but the first time it clicked in a deeper way was about a month ago. I saw her heading into the bathroom, and it hit me that she didn’t turn the light on before closing the door. It finally registered for me that the light makes no difference for her.

She is blind, but she can touch the wood of her cross, smell the fragrance of her incense, and feel the warmth of her candle. I thought about this light, the light of her candle, a light that to her represents the light of Jesus. She can’t just see it and keep a distance from it. She has to come close to feel that the light is there.

Perhaps sometimes we are too lukewarm in our relationship with the Light of the World. We think we can see his light in our logical mind’s eye. But if we do not come close to Jesus, to feel his fire in our hearts, then perhaps we are missing something. Even when everything around us looks dark, when we cannot perceive where the light of God is, we can draw close to feel the essence of his light within us. Right where we are.

Sometimes we are looking for a certain sign of God’s presence that we can analyze from far-off. We want to decide, from a safe distance, that we can trust God. But I believe that God often doesn’t work this way. What I’m experiencing this year is that often the sign of God happens within the comings and goings of daily life. Often the sign is simply love, a love that we have to come close to and open our hearts to in order to experience. Like particles whose motion changes when observed, we can’t come to know God without being changed ourselves. Instead of safe distance, we’re invited into relationship, which of course comes with risk. The risk that being loved will fundamentally change our lives.

We began tonight in the living room, in darkness, with the smell of Ellen’s incense, her cross, and her candle. We held hands for the Lord’s Prayer. Ellen led us in a song from Taize. And then I talked a bit about the Light of the World, coming close to it to not just see it, but feel it.

“Who wants to feel the warmth of the candle?” I asked. My plan was to pass it quickly around the circle, come up with some other reflection on the spot, and then invite everyone to offer their prayers aloud.

But my plans were subverted when the first person who took the candle in his hands to feel its warmth just looked at it intently, and began his prayer.

I guess we’re already there, I mused. There was no need for extra Bible verses or philosophical reflections. The simple truth of God with us was already recognized, in the light of the candle, and in the hearts of everybody there. And so tonight I thank God, once again, for L’Arche, for my friendships there, and for this year in God’s time.