He Entered the Dark to Bring Us Light

Today we observe the shortest light of day and the longest dark of night. For many years, I didn’t count the winter solstice as a part of my Advent tradition, but about ten years ago I was introduced to the solstice’s place in the church calendar with Blue Christmas. In the midst of preparing our hearts for Christ’s birth, Blue Christmas is a time to reflect and lament the hurt and brokenness that exists in the world, and acknowledge that our God hears and sees us calling out to Him from our deepest needs. On this side of the Nativity story we know God’s answer comes (past, present, and future) in the form of His Son, prophesied to be the great Light in the Darkness.

Author and speaker Annie B. Downs has a quote that I’ve seen online multiple times this week. She says,
“I (almost) always come limping into Advent, desperate for light, but almost too tired to look for it. Then I remember: the Light came looking for me and that’s the whole point.”

During the first Christmas of the pandemic my family decided to social distance and not spend the holiday together in the same city. It was weird and lonely. And so I took a mason jar and filled it with candle stubs from old Advent wreaths. I kept the jar with me all day and into the night. And it made the day feel less dark.

What power light holds! It's no surprise our holiday decorations focus so much on light. They pierce the darkness of winter like they have a story to tell.

We don’t often think about how the star over Bethlehem appeared to anyone else in the Nativity story. Imagine Mary and Joseph’s surprise when their dreary dwelling was suddenly cast in a beam of light. They were in the dark—both literally and spiritually—until Jesus was born and entered the dark. Scripture doesn’t give us an exact time when the star appeared, but if the wise men were able to say to King Herod, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2), then it must have been as soon as Jesus let out His first cry into earthly air. The star’s light became a herald for the Light.

I also see this as a bookmark to the darkness that occurred when Jesus hung on the cross, preparing to breathe His last breath. If the Creator would direct the heavens to showcase a brilliant star at Jesus’ birth, why would He not respond in kind at the devastation of His Son’s death. The same Mary who treasured these things in her heart, present at both her son’s birth and death, probably noticed this too.

How much more noticeable the light when it is surrounded by darkness. How much more debilitating the dark when it is devoid of light.

The God who hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky is the same God who sees us in our pain and own personal darkness. He knows that we need more than just words to bring us hope. And so He uses all of creation to point us to Him.

There is a stanza in the Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel that says:

O come, thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by thine Advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Jesus Himself is our day-spring, or sunrise, in modern terms, an echo of Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming light:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
(Isaiah 9:2)

Desiring God writer Jon Bloom reflects on this stanza of the hymn and Jesus’ role as the approaching dawn in his article, He Came to a World in Darkness. Bloom says,

“These luminous words of hope were first spoken 2,700 years ago to a fractured Hebrew people who were watching with anguish as a fearful night fell upon them. It looked as though Israel’s lamp would be forever extinguished. But the prophet foresaw that, beyond this fearful night, a great dawn was coming.

. . . Jesus came into the world as light and became the light of the world. And his light shone in our darkness. But he did more than shine. He set in motion the eternal destruction of our darkness by taking it upon himself. . . and His healing rays have been spreading throughout the world ever since.”

As soon as sin entered the Garden of Eden, we became a people walking in darkness. May we let this long night help that to soak in. From that point onward, we needed a Savior. Someone to not only show us the Light, but actually extinguish the dark. At the first Advent we received the one who would grow up to say: “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46). But we are waiting for a second Advent: a time when Christ will come again to defeat death and darkness forever.

Until that day, we have a Creator who allows us to experience darkness. Without it, we would have no need for light; we would not fight for truth and justice and hope. But we are not alone in this dark. In the most radical intersection of all, we have a God who came down in human form to show us the way.

I love author Kaitlyn Bouchillon’s poetic reflection on this darkness and light. I will end with this:

“. . . The night will seem to swallow everything in a matter of hours, but we’re inching toward the promise, and in His kindness, God saw fit to enter the dark and start the clock.

For now, loss lingers . . . but one day, the day will go on forever. One day, night will be no more (Revelation 22:5). One day, all will be forever bright. But for now, as we limp through the dark, may we remember:

The countdown is on. The clock is ticking. Closer, closer, closer. Always, Light is pushing back and coming for us. And today, on the very darkest day as night stretches as far as it can go, the earth joins in with a declaration spread across creation:

From here on out, the light gets shorter. From here on out, it only gets brighter. No matter how deep the darkness, Hope has something to say. Even now, dawn is on the way.

Next week we’ll celebrate the Light of the world that pierced the night, the One who still wakes the day and paints the sky, the One who couldn’t stand to do anything other than come closer, closer, closer.”

This is Emmanuel. God with us.

Everlasting Father: Born a Creator

Tonight I am starting the 3rd week of Advent early. The third candle represents Jesus as the Everlasting Father.

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
- Isaiah 9:1-2, 6-7 (ESV)

But how, you might ask, can Jesus the Son also be described as a Father? Although the three persons of God in the Trinity have unique roles, their intertwined-ness and dependency on one another enable Jesus to display characteristics of eternal fatherhood. The key focus here, however, should be the infinite nature of Jesus.

In a Gospel Coalition article entitled “How Can Jesus Be Our Everlasting Father?”, David Sunday says,

“Isaiah is speaking of a child who will be born some 700 years in the future—yet he makes clear that this child is the author of eternity, the “father of time”!

In the Old Testament, God refers to Himself as the “First and the Last” (Isaiah 44:6). In the book of Revelation, John sees a vision of Jesus saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. It’s like saying, “from A to Z”—it’s a completion, and comprehensive covering of all things from beginning to end.

Ocieanna Fleiss wonders about the eternal nature of Jesus in the first chapter of her book, Awaiting the Manger. She asks,

“When did the story of Jesus begin? When the angel Gabriel descended to the dusty town of Nazareth to find a peasant girl who would be blessed among women? Or did it begin earlier in history’s halls? Maybe in an easily skimmed-over verse from the book of Micah, when the prophet hailed the little town of Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah. . . Or was it further back into the dark past when our first parents Adam and Eve sided against God . . . when God promised a Deliverer would come from the seed of the woman to crush the serpent’s head, restoring the shattered relationship between God and his sons and daughters? (Genesis 3:15). Surely that was when the story began. But no. Not even then. Jesus’s story—the story of our deliverance from the shackles of sin to new life—began here: ‘Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1:4).”

Before time and space—Jesus thought of us, predestined us, loved us, prepared the way for us.

Fleiss finishes, “And, all of this would first be heralded in a tiny space crammed into a crowded town, when, begotten of the Father’s love, the Son would trade his throne for a manger (Luke 2:7). A lot happened before the beginning.”

Genesis 1:2 describes pre-creation as formless and void, dark and watery. What else does that sound like?

Many thousands of years after the formation of light and land, and living things, Jesus found Himself back in a dark and watery void—the womb of a young woman named Mary. Little did those dwelling on earth know, the baby to be born had given up His divine kingdom to bring about a kingdom of new life. From the very microscopic seed of His mother’s womb to the glorious expanse of His heavenly throne, Jesus indeed is the First and the Last, the eternal One, the Everlasting Father, who has, is, and will continue to weave together an incomparable story of redemption and grace.
 

"Song of the Stars" and Creation's On-going Song

More than one of my favorite authors writes about the imagery of stars singing creation into existence.

In Madeleine L’Engle’s The Wind in the Door, Meg Murray observes,

We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are the musicians. The farae [tiny microorganisms within cells] and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, at the dawn of creation, he writes,

The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it , as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

In today's Christmas picture book, Song of the Stars, Sally Lloyd-Jones (author of The Jesus Storybook Bible), paints a similar picture. But this time, it is the stars that announce the Creator. Unlike other animal-centric Nativity books, this one is filled with all of creation welcoming the newborn king. The wind and the sycamores, the bears and the whales, the flowers and rivers, the grass and the stars, all quiver together, saying:

It’s time! It’s time. Get ready! Be glad!

And like Aslan himself, a lion heralds the good news: “The Mighty King! The Prince of Peace.”

There is a new star in the heavens. It is the Bright and Morning star.

The lambs know too. “The Good Shepherd” they bleat.

And when the bright star comes to rest above a tiny bed of straw, it’s as if the “whole earth and all the stars and sky held its breath” to say, “The One who made us has come to live with us.” He is Emmanuel.

What a mystery! That “heaven’s son, would sleep under the very stars that he made.”

Often, when we see a Christmas story full of animals, it is a literary device to help the youngest of readers relate better with the narrative. Here, Lloyd-Jones helps us see that God made all of creation subject to His glory. So of course, at His earthly arrival, it wouldn’t just be pilgrims and kings, shepherds and magi responding to the brilliant display. From the mighty oak down to the tiny ant, they would wonder, “what child is this?”

What can we learn from this?

A few things. But this one struck the loudest chord: we are not alone on this planet. God filled the land and the sea, the sky and the cosmos with His creation. When we don’t know how to wait, we can look at seeds striving to be mighty trees or caterpillars growing into butterflies, and know that they were created to get there eventually. When we don’t know how to worship, we can look at the glorious sunrises and listen to the sweet sparrows’ songs. When we don’t know how to grieve, we can watch a flower lose its petals for a season and then bloom again when it is the right time.

It probably wasn’t December when the first Christmas took place, but with our modern calendars, the end of the year is when we celebrate Christ’s birth. I don’t think it’s a mistake that as the year draws to a close, we are meant to slow down. It is a time to remember, to reflect, to prepare Him room.