This Advent season, we are invited to look into the dark, and there find the light of Christ.
It is in the midst of the darkness that the light is most easily seen. In the midst of our pain, our sadness, our seasonal depression, and our holiday stresses Christ’s light can have the greatest impact.
In fact, It is in the midst of the oppression, depravity, occupation, and poverty of this world that the light of Christ enters, grows, spreads, becomes human, and snuffs out the dark.
And it is in this season that we await that lights arrival. As the days get shorter, and the nights longer, as the heat of the day grows weaker and the promise of Spring seems but a whisper, we prepare for the lights arrival.
We prepare by looking at the dark. By acknowledging how incomplete we are, and how far from beautiful this world can be. We do the light no service by pretending it is already here. We do the light no service by pretending we can do it on our own.
No, it is only by being honest about this present darkness that we actually prepare ourselves for the light.
So God of Light and life, may you give us the courage to look into the dark this advent. To acknowledge the deepest realities of our need, to name the ways you are not honored in our lives, and to long for a day when things will be better.
Come, Lord Jesus. May your light shine in the dark and may we become little flickering lights. Amen
