Let me ask you a question: where do you store your faith?

Is it bottled up inside you, preserved on a shelf, so that whenever you need it, you can just reach for it? Or is it more ambiguous?

Do you access it only in the darkest of times? Perhaps you only realise it’s there when everything around you collapses in a heap?

Or maybe you have it near you at all times, attached like a hip flask, ever-present and at the ready, waiting for the precise moment you become overwhelmingly parched and need to reach for a life line?

This Chanukah (Hanukkah), I’m thinking about faith. There’s something about adding a new candle each night that reminds me of rekindling faith.

To me, light represents positivity, but also transformation. When lit, candles enhance the atmosphere and change the dynamic in a room.

Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is laden with metaphors and meaning.

In Judaism, a candle represents a soul, the wick always yearning higher. Even a candle that has nearly died out will have a flame that’s striving upwards. A soul doesn’t give up. It may flicker and sway, but to be alive means your soul is alight.

Faith is not much different. It can be present, even without us knowing it.

Candles are beautiful and mesmerising, and it’s easy to get lost in them. But when they burn out, they return to their original state. There’s something uninspiring about it. It’s hard to imagine the glow that was burning so ardently had left you transfixed only minutes ago.

When lit, candles shine a physical light to an area that was previously unlit. They bring transparency; beauty — a shift in the balance of the room.

And yet, an unlit candle is just a piece of moulded wax. There’s nothing remarkable about a candle that is unlit. But take a match to a stationary wick and you have a dancing flame that is very much alive, and an interior space that’s been transformed by its glow.

Light is transformative. It’s faith and hope and belief, but not in an outright sense. Instead, it’s quiet and purposeful; persistent.

We all need light in our lives. We all need faith. We need to know that we hold the ability to take adversary and shape it into something with more depth and perspective, just by shining a light to it. We need to know we have a version of faith that can be ignited.

So, this Chanukah, I’m re-examining my own faith — at times, wavering; at times steady and resolute. And I’m asking myself the same question I’m posing to you: where do you store your faith?