One of my earliest purposes in life was to help my older brothers test things. If the consequences of thrusting bare wires into a light socket were unclear, I would find out. If a football was lodged in the uppermost branches of a spindly tree, guess who had the honour of retrieving it? Yours truly. Ever eager to test things for them, I licked dry cell batteries and icy doorknobs, put spoons in blenders and—I am ashamed to say—Elmer's glue in my sister's hair.
I grew up in a home where practical jokes were as regular as the daily mail, where you found yourself walking through a dark kitchen on any given night, only to have your brother Dan leap from beneath the table, yipping like a coyote. I faked a heart attack once, which helped for a few minutes.
By December we were down to eight or nine hours of pitiful sunlight a day, so I had to keep my guard up. The most frightening spot on earth was in our basement: The Cellar. Often my mother sent me there to retrieve cans of applesauce from a box, which never ran dry. This was 35 years ago, before light switches as we know them. In those primitive years, all we had were pull cords hanging in the furthest spots by heartless electricians.
A few nights before Christmas, my older brother Tim held a flashlight to his face and warned me “just so's I would be careful” of a creature who had found shelter in The Cellar. As I listened wide-eared, he described a white-fanged wolverine the size of an eighth grader who enjoyed little children and craved applesauce. “Sometimes you can see his yellow eyes just before he grabs you,” cautioned Tim. “But mostly he keeps 'em shut till it's too late.”
With a hoarse whisper I asked why he hadn't done something about it, him being so big and all. “Oh, I have,” he said. “I bludgeoned the beast myself with a rake and buried it in a grove of fir trees.” But this only served to anger the wolverine community. One by one they came out of hiding to dwell in our cellar and seek vengeance. There were three of them down there now, he thought. Maybe a whole herd. “Them that are eaten shall have no Christmas,” he said as the flashlight faded to black.
I slept very little that night. To the child who is afraid, everything squeaks.
“Philip.” It was Christmas Eve and Mother needed applesauce. Tiptoeing obediently down the stairway and into the lengthening shadows, I prayed aloud, making deals with God. I even agreed to ask my sister's forgiveness for the glue thing if God would just get me to that first 40-watt light bulb.
With renewed strength, I strode boldly toward it, tripped over a toolbox and whacked my forehead on the ping-pong table.
I don't remember the next few seconds much. But apparently I located the light bulb, because I recall standing beneath it, trying to regain my balance and switch off my fears.
The dim light above the ping-pong table threw ghostly images against the far wall. Six steps to my right was the pull cord. I walked toward it and reached out my hand.
There are defining moments in all of our lives. This was mine. Instead of the cord, I felt long strings of something cold, wet, and slimy. And as I screamed, I beheld the one thing I feared the most: a pair of yellow eyes.
Racing around the ping-pong table, I hurdled the toolbox. This time the heart attack would be real. And then I heard the laughter. It was coming from behind me. I turned to see Tim standing there. Holding two flashlights. And an empty can of spaghetti.
He's a pastor now. And a good man. I am quite sure Tim regrets his activities that dark Christmas Eve, because his jokes got more practical after that. Perhaps he found his purpose in life that Christmas—to nudge people closer to the Kingdom of God. It worked with me. That night I apologized to my sister, and then asked my father to read me the Christmas story over and over. When you're afraid of the basement or a big brother, there's nothing quite like it to turn the lights on.
“Immanuel,” said my dad, “you know what it means?” I didn't. “It means that God is with us. That He will never leave us or forsake us. He's the one who turned the lights on at Christmas.” With that, I drifted off to sleep.
Those who fear Him have nothing to be afraid of.
