It’s hard to imagine Christmas without candles. Their warm glow seems to belong to the season. They create atmosphere, but they also carry deep symbolism.

When I came to write Like a Candle Flame, it was the vulnerability of a candle flame that captured my imagination. I wanted to use that image as a metaphor for the life of the baby Jesus.

Any baby is vulnerable. But when you consider that this baby is the Son of God, and that “the hopes and fears of all the years” rest upon His tiny life, the image becomes even more powerful. The light of the world, so fragile and yet unstoppable.

Over the years, The Candle Song has been sung in all sorts of settings by choirs and congregations, in school assemblies and nativity plays. One of the most moving traditions I’ve seen is when a service begins in complete darkness, with just one small candle burning. As the light spreads from that single flame to each person holding a candle, the room fills with light; a vivid picture of how Christ’s light spreads through our world, one life at a time.

My favourite line in the song has always been:

“Uncreated light shines through infant eyes.”

That line was my attempt to capture something of the mystery of the Incarnation, that the eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, entered our world in human form. The light that existed before time began now shines through the eyes of a child.

That’s the wonder of Christmas: the eternal becoming human, the Light of the World coming to dwell among us.