The Darkest Night
It is an early brisk Thursday morning. It is officially winter. Yesterday was the darkest day of the year. It is only a few days before Christmas but I am not putting the last touches on my Christmas Eve sermon. I am looking over the liturgy for a funeral. Today I will stand beside a casket as it is lowered into the cold winter earth as I sit with other brothers and sisters in the faith as we lay to rest a beloved child of God.
Christmas is a hard season for a lot of people. For many people, the next few days will bring about many painful firsts. The first Christmas without the spouse they created a life with over the past five decades. The first Christmas where the kids have chosen to not come home because of a riff that has fractured the family. The first Christmas that was supposed to be filled with awe and wonder through the eyes of a new child, but those dreams have been cut short because of yet another miscarriage.
Christmas is not always full of sugar plums and candy canes. It is often covered with the suffocating wet blanket of loss and grief. To those of you who are grieving, I am sorry for your loss, whatever your loss may be. I really do mean that. The reality is that we live in a very broken world that is continually bombarded by the heelish power of the Evil One.
I feel like what I am about to say next is a cop-out or just religious dogma, but I really do believe it. On Christmas, we remember that light is still shining in the darkness. On Christmas, we remember that God has not forsaken his creation, that God has not forsaken you. I really wish God would show up in bigger and more spectacular ways, yet he chose to come to us in the form of a helpless baby born to a teenage mother in a backwater town.
Yet, the announcement of the birth of this baby struck fear into the hearts of those who represented the abuse of power and oppression. The birth of this baby meant that things were about to change. And the announcement of the birth of this baby is still pushing back against the forces of evil that seem to be untethered in our world.
Yes, I wish that God was moving in bigger and more spectacular ways. Yet, I still believe and have hope that he is still moving and is still redeeming the most broken of hearts in the darkest of nights.
If you are the church-going type I assume you will sing Silent Night this Christmas Eve as you hold a candle in your hand. At that moment don’t give in to the sentimentality of Christmas. Rather take a moment and pray for those in your life who find it hard to see and believe that God is still shining in the darkest of nights. Pray that God may use you this week to be an agent of light in the darkness.
Merry Christmas my friends.
Grace and peace ‘til we rise in glory.
