From Deseret News archives:
LDS temple in Washington alight with Christmas cheer
"I believe that these Christmas lights radiate the great hope of this season, that we absorb their wondrous luminescence just as we draw warmth and comfort from an open fire," said Elder Ralph W. Hardy Jr. of the Quorum of the Seventy.
And, he added, the lights symbolize that "each of us can acquire, through our faith in God, a greater light within ourselves with which to confront the challenges and dark corners of our days."
The Festival of Lights, officially hosted by members of Congress who are LDS Church members and the International and Governmental Affairs Office of the LDS Church, was attended by hundreds of invited guests, diplomats and dignitaries from around the world.
This year's festivities had a distinctly Belgian flavor as Frans van Daele, the Belgium ambassador to the United States, offered a message of world peace and hope.
Van Daele spoke of his homeland, ravaged by two world wars, and how it is now the focal point for world peace and a unified Europe. It is, he said, "a promised land of peace and tolerance."
As peace in Belgium was built upon the ruins of war, so too can peace flourish from the tragedy of today's wars.
"Most problems can be solved through negotiation and compromise," he said, but added there can be "no compromise and no negotiation" if warring sides will not sit down together.
And after the wars have been fought, "foes become friends and brothers in arms, or just brothers," van Daele said.
E-mail: spang@desnews.com
