A Light Unto the Path

by Sarah Earlene Shere, ©2024

(Oct. 18, 2024) — There once was a widow who had but one son. Sadly, the lad had been terribly spoiled by his father, thus was neither a help nor a comfort to his mother when her husband died. After his father’s passing, realizing he would no longer be able to get away with every little misdeed as he so pleased, one night, in late October, the brazen young man set out of the house and into the great, wide world, vowing to his mother that he would never return.

But the widow loved her son, and she grieved this second loss in her life. One night, during her evening prayers, a thought came to her: While her son may have escaped her voice, he could never escape her prayers. With renewed hope, the poor mother hurried outside to hunt up a gourd from the garden. She took it inside, immediately sat down and, cutting off the top of the vegetable, scooped out its innards. In the dim glow of a burning candle, she carefully carved a lovely design out of the gourd’s side. When her work was finished, she noticed her candle had burned down to a stub. Smiling, she took it and set it down inside the lantern she had just made. Taking it to the window, the mother placed it on the sill, knelt down and lifted her face to Heaven. “Dear God,” she prayed, “Please watch over my son, Jack, and let this light guide him home.”

Years passed. One late October night, a disheveled, unshaven man limped toward the little cottage, his blurry eyes fixed upon a carved lantern with a stub of a candle burning inside. He remembered what the man had said to him when he arrived in the village, “There’s no one lives in that rundown shack now, not since that crazy old widow died. Worked herself into a grave, I’d say: making candles and carving out lanterns throughout each year, believing they’d light his way home. Lot of good it did her.”

The traveler, now, turned away from the house with tears in his eyes. Stepping over to two headstones under a tree, he knelt between the graves. Placing a hand on one of them, he smiled, “You were right, Mother, your light brought me home.”

In honor of Jack’s lantern, we continue to carve out gourds, light them up and display them for the lost world to see; it’s a reminder that our light can lead them home.