The last Sunday of Advent is here. It's also the darkest Sunday of the year for the northern hemisphere. The sun doesn't even grace the sky for nine hours north of the 45th parallel. We go to work by streetlight and come home the same, missing sunrise and sunset equally. This year the absence of light seems telling, a culmination of a year that held many dark days. Not only days of death but days when, isolated, we faced the machinations of our own hearts and perhaps are left with broken lives in their wake. Marriages ending as couples find without the distractions of normal life they don't care to stay committed. Many turning to food, bringing quips about an extra 15. Of course many feel the darkness enter their souls and counsellors face inundation with new clients dealing with depression and addiction, among other things.
The darkness presses in from outside our lives as well, as again and again we face helpless moments as seemingly arbitrary government restrictions change from one day to another. With every ounce of our beings we want to pretend this year never happened. Sensational news focuses on dramatic moments, augmenting the atmosphere of hopelessness. Facts fall by the wayside and all we hear from every direction is fear. In spite of doing what we think is right in the moment perhaps we still find ourselves alone, wounded by love, sickened in body, exhausted in mind. Darkness. Death.
Into the dying year comes a day to remember light. Trivialised with trappings of glitz and glamour that are helpless against the darkness all around, still a glimmer of light comes through a crack in the doorway. He came into a world equally struggling with hope. To an oppressed people who longed with everything inside them to see the promised redemption. He came - He comes - proclaiming love - joy - hope - peace, the only One who truly shines with assurance of these things. He stood - He stands - with arms outstretched offering the very thing that dispels the darkness and many chose - and still choose - to keep their eyes shut and wave their hands on their own in these dark days, not recognising the significance right before them.
This year was significant. The darkness rose up like a towering storm cloud and reminded us of the futility of arranging life on our own. But significant moments are often unusually packaged like that dark night in Bethlehem and come when we least expect it. Have we reached the end of ourselves? The end of our striving, our attempts to arrange life on our own? Can we open our eyes to see the light that is shining in the darkness and embrace Him, becoming a glass vessel through which He can gleam? The choice is ever before us--He invites us to come, to step into the light, to shine ever brighter as the darkness spreads.
Happy Christmas
May you let Him transform you and may next year be even more glorious.
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