Every parish I have ever served — urban, rural, lakeside, or nestled between a Tim Hortons and a tractor dealership — has had one thing in common: the mysterious drawer of candles.
You know the one.
It’s usually in the sacristy, or occasionally hiding beneath the fair-linen cupboard like an oversized chipmunk wintering stash. It opens with a slight groan, as though warning you to proceed at your own risk, and inside lies a collection of candles so varied that one might assume Indiana Jones moonlighted as a parish sacristan.
There are half-burned Paschal candles from years no one remembers. There are stubs of Advent candles — usually three purple and one pink that’s suspiciously half the length of the others, suggesting that somewhere along the line someone really needed some extra joy. There are beeswax tapers, leftover altar candles, tea-lights that appear to date from the early Pleistocene era, and a chunky candle with a dove sticker that no one claims to have purchased.
And then there are the mystery bags:
• A zip-top containing two candles, a dried palm leaf, and a lone birthday candle.
• A grocery bag full of votives for a vigil that must have happened, though no one recalls why.
• A collection of red glass holders, clearly used at some point but now coated in wax in ways that defy the laws of physics and probably several canons.
Parish lore around these drawers is rich.
One Altar Guild Directress once told me, with great seriousness, “We keep these because you never know when the bishop might show up unexpectedly.” I didn’t have the heart to explain that unless the bishop arrived with a sudden need for 47 mismatched votives and a half-burned Epiphany star, we might not be as prepared as she hoped.
But beneath the gentle chaos lies something deeply Anglican and quietly beautiful. Candles are signs of feast days kept, prayers whispered, vigils held, Advents waited through, and Holy Weeks shouldered. They are symbols of community memory—some bright, some dim, but all still offering a little light.
Even the forgotten ones tell stories: the tealight from the night we stayed late with someone in grief; the taper saved from the Easter fire when hope blazed; the tiny stub used during a power outage when the choir gamely kept practising in the half-dark. (They sang flat, but with sincerity.)
And so, the drawer remains.
Not because we need more things to sort, or because members of the Altar Guild enjoy living dangerously, but because God’s people have always gathered around small lights — some intentional, others accidental, all pointing toward Christ’s great light that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
If ever there were an archaeological site worth preserving, it is the parish candle drawer: a little museum of faith, wax, and wicks — testifying that every moment we shared mattered enough to light something.
Companion Prayer
Gracious God,
You are the Light that guides our steps and warms our hearts.
We thank you for every candle lit in hope, in sorrow, in celebration, and in quiet prayer.
Bless the simple signs of our life together—wax, wicks, drawers of holy clutter—
that remind us of your presence in every season.
As we carry your light into the world,
may we shine with gentleness, humour, and grace.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen