A Cigarette Lighter And Christmas

I lied, lit a man’s cigarette, and this story has nothing directly to do with Christmas—except the lighter. There. My confession is over with, and I’ll get on with my tale: Soon after one Christmas season long ago, when our children were small, I took my elder son to our downtown library. The library is adjacent to a city park where the homeless congregated during the day. Patrons would park and then walk alongside or through the park to the library entrance and likewise return to their vehicle. As we walked out of the library that day there was a homeless man in a wheelchair with useless legs and only nubs where his hands should be. I felt compelled to try to share with him the good news about Jesus and with my son following walked up to and greeted him. As I began to witness to him, he began fiddling with his belly/fanny pack. I couldn’t help watching, amazed at how he was finally able to unzip it with only nubs. Then, reaching inside the bag, he, squeezing it between his stubs, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lifted it to his mouth, and with his lips pulled one out. Speaking around the cigarette, as he dropped the pack back into his bag, he broke in, “Do you have a light?” Interrupted, I shook my head and answered simply, “No.” I tried to resume my line of thought when it occurred to me that I had unintentionally lied. I was wearing the same coat that I wore to church, and at some point during our Christmas program that year, I had pocketed one of the lighters we used to ignite the candles. I had just remembered that lighter. Still talking, I reached inside my pocket to check, and there it was. I had lied; I did have a light! Already flustered trying to witness to him as I watched his efforts of unzipping his bag, maneuvering the pack of cigarettes, extracting one out of it with his lips and being interrupted midsentence, I was completely knocked off kilter with the thought that I had lied to the man. I reflexively pulled the lighter out of my coat and spoke my thoughts out loud: “Wait, I do have a lighter.” He, seemingly not noticing my red face and consternation, leaned his head forward towards me, pointed the cigarette clinched in his mouth in my direction, and said, “Great. Here, give me a light.” Stunned with no thought to what I was doing and unable to think of how to refuse him, I found myself robotically, obediently, flicking the lighter into flame and holding it under his cigarette as he took deep drags until its end was glowing orange-red. “Thank-you,” he said while exhaling a cloud of smoke. All I could think of was, “What if one of my parishioners is driving by and saw me light a man’s cigarette?” See, in our particular religious tradition, cigarettes are seen as a “filthiness of the flesh.” Beyond, that cigarettes cause cancer. I could well have been contributing to a cancer that would kill the man. It wasn’t just my parishioners I needed to be concerned about. There stood my young son taking it all in, watching his Dad/Pastor light a man’s cigarette. I don’t know how I ended that witnessing encounter with that man. Just can’t remember. I do remember desperately hoping that my son got the message of the need to share the Gospel with folks and being kind to someone in need rather than that cigarette smoking is a good thing. I could only hope. I know the end doesn’t justify the means, yet, what I did that day could be considered as an intended act of kindness in response to the man’s needy condition. See, he may have had a lighter in his bag, but the point was, even if he had a lighter, he without hands could not have operated it. His was a bad condition and a bad habit. Yet, I trust, my act was one of kindness (you be the judge). God would never be complicit in our wrong doing. Of that I’m sure. Yet, truth is, God discovered us in a really horrible condition involved in really bad habits and sins. But, He responded with kindness. The only explanation I have for lighting the man’s cigarette was that he had a need (as he saw it), and I had the lighter. Jesus has responded likewise. We had the need, and He was the Light. He lit our darkness. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8). And, that’s no lie! It’s also what Christmas is all about.

A Cigarette Lighter And Christmas

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