Today, in late January 2025, my Christmas tree is still up. There are a few reasons, not the least of which is that I simply haven’t wanted to take the time to put everything back in the attic. But also, I simply have enjoyed looking at it.
Since early November, I’ve been grieving the America I once knew, and I’ve been struggling lately to put into words what I’ve been feeling. That’s especially true today, a day after the inauguration, as a host of policies actually were signed into reality that previously had only been threatened. It’s suddenly clear that, yes, the next few years are going to be deeply difficult in many ways for a great many people, many of whom I care about.
As I walked out of my kitchen tonight and flipped off the lights, I glanced at the living room and stopped in my tracks as something struck me.
My house is literally awash in the glow of thousands of little LED lights. I totally love fairy light strings. Nearly every major room has one or more strings of color-changeable lights. My office has many strips in different colors around the ceiling and the windows. The living room has two garland-draped strings around the ceiling, and with the illuminated Christmas tree, it’s a gorgeous cacophony of dots of color and brightness.
And the phrase of which I was suddenly reminded tonight goes clear back to President George H. W. Bush in his 1989 inaugural speech, “a thousand points of light.” Actually the phrase is rather older than that, first seen in public in an Arthur C. Clarke science fiction novel from 1946, and I’m sure it was used before that by various stargazers. But I love what President Bush said about it, at least in that speech:
“I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.”
President George H.W. Bush – Points of Light – YouTube
He meant something specific by that phrase: how each individual can be one of those points of light, a spark in their own community, whereby enough such motivated people can illuminate the world even though any one contribution may seem insignificantly bright. Later he founded a non-profit organization to promote volunteerism, which led to millions of volunteers around America and the world, first bringing hope a d recovery after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in America, the earthquake in Haiti, and many other powerful efforts to serve the hurting and the needy.
I stood for a moment in my darkened living room, taking in the beauty of our Christmas tree. It’s simpler than in previous years; we intentionally kept it low-key this year, but as a result I have appreciated the simplicity and the sparkle of the lights on the various ornaments in a new way.
Something else I noticed in that moment: on the wall next to my tree is a map of the United States, that my wife and I have used over our 32 years of marriage to record trips that we’ve taken together around this beautiful country. Although I had no other lights on in the room, that map was positively glowing in the illumination from all those hundreds of lights on the tree and around the ceiling.
Well.
What a difference in vision from Bush’s inaugural address, to what the nation witnessed this week in the 2025 inauguration speeches.
President Bush asked, how can you serve your neighbor? What can you do to bring light to those around you? Can we cut through the darkness and let our lives shine in a way that is beautiful to the watching world?
This week, though? I didn’t watch the ceremony. I couldn’t bear to. But I’ve read the transcript, and to me, it was a warlike, divisive, authoritarian cry. Full of language more appropriate to a fascist ruler than a president determined to serve for the sake of the citizens. Speaking against those who have tried to bring equality and inclusion. Promises to exclude those seeking shelter from oppression abroad. Promising to round up and export immigrants. Focusing on the imagined criminality of anyone unlike us. Determination to ignore the health of our planet. Crushing our good relationships with other nations, and imposing economically-damaging tariffs. Promising to take land from other nations by force.
And in the wake of that speech, in just 24 hours, a bevy of executive orders were issued that will, in my view, deeply harm many people, cut off our relationships with other nations, and damage the strength of our democracy, perhaps irreparably.
In short, nothing that was said this week has been restorative, hopeful, uplifting.
None of this really surprised me; it was just a continuation of what I’ve seen coming for months. But now we have to deal with it.
It remains to be seen how widely this rhetoric will spread, how widely these executive actions will be effective, how many people will be harmed. But I think it’s clear that those of us who reject this approach to government are going to be on the defensive, working in opposition and damage control, hoping and praying that we get back to something more sane in the future.
A lot of what was said yesterday, maybe not directly by the new president, but absolutely by many of his supporters, claimed to be motivated by their Christian convictions. I, and certainly many other followers of Jesus, find these claims directly opposed to the Gospels that we understand. It’s more than I care to detail right now, but as the briefest of summaries, I don’t see how to reconcile these new directions from the president with the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount or in Matthew 25:31-46, about how we treat the “least of these,” the poor and needy and oppressed both here at home and around the world. Even the claims of his supporters that this is how we protect our families fails to account for Jesus’ words about sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others, and following His example to take up our cross and die to ourselves.
And so my heart has been breaking with what I see happening, on several levels.
I grieve for America. The “shining city on a hill,” to cite Reagan’s farewell speech also in 1989, seems to me to have been surrounded with barbed wire and its lights extinguished.
I grieve for our democracy, as I watch a handful of billionaires take over the reins of power and begin to call the shots in government, losing any sense of “by the people, for the people;” now it’s government by the rich, for the rich.
I grieve for our citizens, so many of whom have been infected with this fear and hatred and racism and bigotry of all kinds, that they’ll follow a man as immoral as this president who promises to give their nation back to only them and to forcefully exclude “your tired and your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
I grieve for those who will be harmed and killed by these changes.
I grieve for the American church, so disturbingly many of whom I see so smitten with a lust for political power and control that they throw their neighbors’ well-being and safety aside in a race to “make America great again” in some imagined kind of purity and supposed righteousness that isn’t really even Biblical.
So what can I do?
Perhaps this is why the “thousand points of light” struck me so strongly in that moment: perhaps the only thing I can see to do, is to be a tiny point of light myself. If enough of us do that, we can re-illuminate America, just like my Christmas tree lit that map on the wall.
So you might wonder, what does that look like to me? To be a point of light?
It’s interesting to me that, when I was a younger Christian, one trope that we often heard was not hiding our light under a bushel. And another was that the darker the world got, the brighter our little candlelight would shine. Perhaps perversely, we reveled in that idea that the world was growing darker, and so our witness would be more apparent.
Yet here we are, in 2025, with so many Christians persuaded that the best way to shine is to take over the world, make America officially Christian, grab hold of all the reins of power, take over the seven mountains of influence in our culture, somehow turn on the floodlights and illuminate the city on the hills that way. But if you do that, totally ignoring whether or not it’s biblical to partner with empire like that, how could anyone see the spark of each point of light? It feels like there’s an assumption that those points of light don’t matter, if we just turn on the culture-wide glare of the floodlights, if empire IS the light, instead of each person. Because then those candles, those thousand points of light, are quite irrelevant.
And perhaps that is why I feel there’s something deeply wrong with Christian nationalism, this idea that we can or should ever take over: it makes the individual acts of kindness unimportant: in that view, our culture is now officially Christian; the Kingdom has fully arrived here in America; we’ve won.
But the entire story of the Bible, if you get right down to it, is the determination to stand faithfully as an exile, as one not actually in control or in charge, as one who is unbowed by the pressures of the κόσμος (kosmos), the empire, by Egypt, by Babylon. As one who is willing to die at the hands of the oppressor, rather than call down legions of angels to save us from earthly pain, to sacrifice ourselves to save our neighbors, to turn the other cheek and perhaps die if necessary, rather than lash out with a sword to kill our opponent.
Jesus rejected all those things of power, and calls us yet today to follow His example.
Here’s what I see coming: a massive disappointment for those who think they just won, as a handful of infinitely rich men take control of our political system, so thoroughly that it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get it back. And they have no love for the Way of Jesus. Whatever the Christians who supported this new president may have thought would happen, it won’t ultimately go their way. They were just a convenient stepping stone to power and control. Doesn’t matter if this president gets his way; he has almost no power of his own that isn’t ultimately going to be held by these rich men, these oligarchs. If they choose to throw their weight around, he cannot fight them. He’s now just a puppet to money, and we’re puppets to his rule. And all this will become shockingly clear soon enough.
I’m not being prophetic here; I’m not claiming any special knowledge. I’m just looking at what has happened around the world many many times before, observing what’s happening right now, and making a very human prediction.
And I hope to God I’m wrong. I’d love to wake up after the 2026 election and find that America utterly rejected these politics and this administration, and they took back their power from these men. But I doubt that very much. I think the great American experiment has failed, even if it takes a few more years to be obvious to everyone.
So, again, what can I do?
Be a point of light. Not necessarily a blinding glare seen around the world – just me, speaking to a few dozen viewers and readers, and to the handful of friends who hear my voice. Just a small point of light, but utterly pure in its own brilliance as I radiate the real light of Jesus at the small scale of my own life.
And to be content with that scale. But within my limited scope, to try to inspire others, like you, to also be a point of light in your own context.
Because, just like in my living room, what matters is not any one of those tiny lights. What illuminates that map of America on my wall is the sum of all of them. The beauty is when we put them all together. Shining a floodlight on that tree wouldn’t be beautiful; it would be harsh and hard on the eyes. But that soft nighttime glow is truly awe-inspiring, and I could sit and look at that tree for a long time, rejoicing in all the ways the light bounces off the ornaments, each one unique, each beautiful in different ways – and yet, together, the beauty being much greater than the sum of their individual parts.
So that, I think, is my mission for the next season: to be a tiny but pure point of light to those who are around me, by serving others, protecting others, resisting the evil in whatever small ways are available to me. And to inspire others to do the same.
Join with me, if you can. Let’s return to being followers of The Way, the way of Jesus, with all the sacrifice and humility and rejection of empire that it entails.
I’ll see you out there. Stay strong, stay faithful, and take courage.
Be blessed. We’ll talk again soon.
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