Now the Light of Life Has Come!—

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). To live in December is to know the yearning for a spring sun and the light that it brings. The long, dark days can dampen even the cheeriest of hearts. It is believed that for this reason the early Church chose December 25th as the day on which to celebrate Christmas. Its close proximity to the darkest day of the year, December 22, was a call for Christians to draw a parallel between the physical darkness of our world and the spiritual darkness that plots and plans to overcome our hearts by turning our heads from the purest, brightest, and truest light of life: Jesus the Christ. In December, we long for the light of spring and even better, the Light of the World to come.

Now, let’s enter into those first hours of Jesus’s earthly life when He was a helpless baby, born into humble circumstances, to the most ordinary of parents, and laid in a lowly manger. And yet, there was no darkness that would be able to overcome Him. The most powerful man in Rome was powerless to kill Him, the law-steeped hearts of the pharisaical religious rulers would be impotent to still His purposes, and Satan himself could not bind Him to the grave! Praise God for this gift, gentle as a lamb, mighty as a lion, born into our dark world to be our Light and Life.  If we had the ability to visit that manger, to hear the crunching of hay beneath our feet, to smell the odors of the barn and see that precious little baby breathe and kick and coo, the noise of the world and the busyness of our schedules would fall away, and we would fall on our knees, repenting of our sin and crying for the return of this same Child as a mighty warrior, just and true!

The beginning of Advent season often marks the beginning of a mad dash to Christmas Day with presents, parties, performances, and travel cluttering our minds with noise. What is most important is easily pushed to the side in a hurried hustle and bustle to meet the demands from family, community and the world. Perhaps our churches today can still do what the early Church did over 1500 years ago and seek to set apart Advent. This November, consider gathering the families of your church together for a special evening to welcome this holy season and to remember this gift of light and life. Set up tables in your fellowship hall with candles, play Handel’s Messiah as background music, and eat a “shepherd’s meal.” Most importantly, call for intentionality to enter this season as we would if Jesus were physically in His manger in our homes. Would we not bow before Him every morning? Would we not open our hands to each day that the Father gives to us? Would we not clear our calendars and seek Him in all things? Would the earthly gifts not pale in comparison to the gift of the Baby in the manger? Pray for a way to make the extraordinary not to be ordinary for your families. Make this a time of hope and longing so that when they return home, they have a renewed encouragement for the truth of salvation. Pray that your families would be in a state of awe for this gift of light in a dark season and in what can be a dark world. Finally, encourage them to reflect the light of Jesus to our world!