“Letting Christ’s Light Shine Through Us—Reflections on My Dad,” Liahona, Dec. 2025.
Covenant Women
Letting Christ’s Light Shine Through Us—Reflections on My Dad
Our light shines brightest when we love as Jesus loved.
Illustration by David Green
Perhaps there is someone who has passed to the other side of the veil—someone you spend a little extra time thinking about in December and at Christmastime.
For me, that’s my dad. He has a December birthday. He passed away just after Christmas nearly 18 years ago.
My dad always had a job that required travel.
He traveled by airplane at a time before headphones or earbuds. There was no screen in the back of the seat in front of him. No online entertainment. No mobile phone, tablet, or laptop computer.
Back then, to pass the time while you traveled, you had three choices: sleeping; reading a book, magazine, or newspaper; or talking to the person sitting next to you.
My dad always chose the third.
He came home from every trip with a story about his seatmate. His or her life story!
I don’t know how much my dad gave up about himself. But he had an uncanny ability, a listener’s gift. People felt comfortable with him. Comfortable enough to share their personal stories—heartaches and triumphs and everything in between.
And because my dad was ever an optimist, a true disciple of Jesus Christ, I know people left their flights known, heard, loved, happy, and a little more optimistic than when they boarded.
My dad believed in something Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once wrote: “The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well.”
At another time, Elder Maxwell expressed the idea this way: “[God’s] planning and precision pertain not only to astrophysical orbits but to human orbits as well. … Like the Christmas star, each of us, if faithful, has an ordained orbit.”
Will you pay attention to the people in your human orbit?
Who has the very God of the universe placed in your path?
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, how can you be more deliberate in warming and illuminating their way?
The source of all light—our Savior, Jesus Christ—asks us to let the light we derive from Him shine through us (see Matthew 5:14–16; 3 Nephi 12:14–16). One way we do so is by paying attention to the people around us. Acknowledging them. Listening to them. Loving them. Our light shines brightest when we love as Jesus loved.
In this season when we celebrate the birth of Him who is the source of all light, I share my conviction that He is aware of us, individually, and that He loves each one of us. He not only lights the path but also, by His infinite and intimate Atonement, provides the path home.