Shining in Our Darkness
If Christmas is like the first light from heaven, where did it shine? It shone in the midst of “those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” That light has shone in the night of our existence and has come to us who sit in darkness and walk in the shadow of death in this life.
What is the darkness in which we sit and the shadows in which we walk? They are the negatives of life: our doubts and senseless fears, our narrowness and prejudice, our hatred and lovelessness, our selfishness and self-centeredness, our stupidity and blindness, our ignorance and superstition, our falsehood and love of untruth, our sin and guilt, our rebellion and alienation, our sickness and death.
What is this light that shines into our darkness? If darkness is the negatives of our existence, then light is the positives: love, compassion, acceptance, truth, goodness, and life, the very Fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:22-23.
Light is yes in a chorus of nays, affirmation in our denials, faith in our doubt, peace in our anxiety, hope in our despair, forgiveness in our guilt, reconciliation in our separation, vision in our blindness, acceptance in our rejection, healing in our sickness, and the abundant life everlasting in our death.
The positive has been accentuated at Christmas. The positive has come in clarity and fullness in Christ. The sun of heaven, who is the Son of God, has shone into the darkness where we sit and into the shadows where we walk.
Christmas reminds us of how amazingly strong the positive is. It is surprising how much darkness a little light can drive away. Only a flicker of light in the night is stronger than we can know. All the darkness of the universe cannot put it out.
A baby was born in the obscurest place of an obscure village. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, the cheapest of garments, and laid in a manger, essentially a hay trough. He whimpered during the night as His mother kept a vigil over Him. We can imagine that to onlooking eyes, that situation looked so weak, helpless, and unpromising. Yet there was more power in that manger than in all the Roman legions. And it was that baby, not some Caesar, whose strength would not fail and who would one day be the Lord of human history, the Lord of all!
Arthur John Gossip wrote of the strength of goodness:
“In all this amazing world is there a more amazing thing than the invincibility of goodness? Everything seems against it. Yet it refuses to be killed. Often and often it is down, and all looks over. But somehow it always scrambles to its feet again and fights on. The tide ebbs out and out, and then it turns. The night falls and grows blacker; and then comes the dawn.” 1
Where is that light that first shone at Christmas? When John wrote his Gospel, he said it was still shining in the darkness, and the darkness had not overcome it. Yet even today, it is still shining in the darkness of our modern world. We have the assurance from God’s promises that it will never go out and that it will continue to shine until all the forces of darkness have been routed and we come upon a city that has “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. . . . Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there)” (Revelation 21:23, 25).
To Be Continued
1 Arthur J. Gossip, The Interpreter’s Bible, (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 