Darkness, and Great Light

“The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great Light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a Light dawned.”

If there is any such thing as a universal symbol, it just might be light.

In every place and culture all around the world, everybody instinctively associates light with things like truth and insight and joy. Whether it’s our Christmas, or the Hanukkah of Judaism, or Chinese New Year, or some other “festival of light”, it always seems to point to the same sorts of experience: that of being able to see, whereas before, one could not. Is not the celebrated historical period of the secular skeptics called “The Enlightenment”? Even the irreligious are drawn to this symbolism.

Here we are, at the darkest period of the year. No wonder that one of the most welcome sights of the Christmas season is those many-colored lights with which we deck our homes. Our eyes thirst for light.

Blindness is darkness, and sight is light. We need to know, we need to see. It’s part of what we are, it’s in our design: our eyes positioned in the fronts of our heads so that they may guide us where we need to go. We see before we arrive. We are creatures of sight, and sight is impossible without light.

No Place to Go

But where were these people of whom Isaiah spoke eight centuries before the coming of Christ? In darkness. There was no seeing, and no possibility of seeing. There they were, as Matthew tells us when he quotes Isaiah, “sitting”, or “fixed in place”, if you like. This was their steady state. Like a person with nowhere to go, and no way to find, they had just sat down and given up. They had to accept their fate.

What was that fate? What is it that they did not know? They did not know God. They didn’t have a stitch of information. Who was God? Why did he create us? What does he want of us? Where are we going? What is worth doing? These questions no man could answer.

What about God’s attitude to us, too? Is he who created us pleased with his creation? Has he abandoned us? Does he hate us? What is he going to do to us? There was no way of knowing, and no way of escaping, so we might as well sit. Nobody’s going anyplace.

Black Darkness

But while we sat, we also sat in the shadow of death. Yes, we all knew death is coming: the mortality rate around here is 100% — everybody dies. But the same decline, aging, decay and corruption that would eventually take us all off cast its long shadow back over the years, spreading its gloom backward across the whole of life. Expectations fail. Aspirations falter. Hopes dwindle. Longings go unfulfilled. Friendships break or are betrayed. Throughout the whole of life, decline, decay and death spread their dread pall across everything we know. If there is a God, does he even care?

So we sit. There’s no way to escape and no place to go. We don’t know what to do, or in which direction is any hope of better things.

Great Light

But Jesus brought to us a great light. Not just a little one: a great one. And we saw. When Christ came, we knew for the first time that God is truly our Father. He longs for us to relate to him not as slaves, not even as servants, but as sons. He is not only ready to welcome us home, but has come to the world himself, in the person of his Son, to take hold of our situation and to struggle with it on our behalf, and to overcome that we might live. He is not an uncaring, distant deity: he is our present help and the whole of our future hope.

For the first time, the way forward is really made clear. We need sit no longer. The path before us is illuminated by Jesus. Just as any light instantly cuts through the darkness and defeats it, the very presence of the Son of God on earth, from the very first moment, hailed the certainty of the defeat of shadow, of confusion, of uncertainty of helplessness and of death itself. If God has decided to be for us, who or what will stand against us? The coming of Christ is the purest testament to the action of God in taking hold of our situation and defeating all that held us in defeat.

Behold, your light has come.

The Meaning of Light

What does light do when it comes? Many things. Light illuminates, so that we see the truth about all that is around us. Light comes suddenly: when you turn it on, there is no second of hesitancy; the light is off, then the light is on, and everything changes. Light banishes darkness at the very instant of its coming. Light empowers our eyes: we see, we recognize, we understand, for the first time, what is around us. Everything is made clear. The truth of all things becomes manifested to us. We see, we understand, we know.

But light hurts the eyes, too. If you’ve ever been in a dark room, perhaps sleeping, and then had somebody come in and flash on the light, you know the feeling … pain, irritation, rage: “Turn that light off!” The Word says that men often love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Good men bring their deeds into the light that they may be seen as having been done in the power of God; but not all received the Light, and some hated him. Yet he would come, whether they would welcome him or not: for the hatred of the many was well worth it to him for the salvation of his own.

The Triumph of Light

Here's the other thing about light: light never loses. Any amount of light always cuts darkness. You have a light switch on your wall, perhaps; but you have no “dark switch”. You can turn on the light, but you can’t “turn on” the dark. Darkness may be the default, but any amount of light always vanquishes all darkness. The darkness can never overcome the light.

Your light is here. It’s come in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, sent to you to banish your darkness and to manifest to you the love of God, the love of a heavenly Father. Whether you will turn to this light or not, the light will still shine. His light will illuminate you. His love will implore you. His presence will test you. His conquest of darkness will soon be complete.

An Invitation

Eight centuries before, and now, more than two millennia after, the radiance of this coming casts its glow. The light is not abated today. The coming of Jesus Christ still cuts through our darkness and confusion and banishes the shadow of death. Still he draws to him all those who will turn to the light; and they will find their way forward illuminated to them, and they will find his help on hand, even more profoundly that when he first came. For he has left his Spirit with us to guide us into all truth.

Have you seen the Light? When you turn to him, you will see God loves you. You will see your sin and sadness in its true light. But you will no longer have to sit in darkness and the shadow of death. You can turn to that Light. He will deliver you, He will bring you into the truth, and he will make your way plain. One day he will bring you complete into his marvelous, eternal light, yourself made into a being of light and glory.

How sincere is this offer? God sent his Son to do it. He could send no better, and give no more. This is God’s gift to you this Christmas. This is the True Light, the light of the whole world. He’s the only such light there is.

Only receive him. Believe God’s ultimate offer, and take it for yourself.

Merry Christmas.