I love the Christmas lights which people drape outside their homes. Tiny twinkling lights, like miniature stars, not casting much light around them, but carrying a hint of promise, that there is more to come. Little points of light that point to something more.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. As Christians we read those words in Isaiah, written around 540 BC, as foretelling the coming of Christ. More than 600 years later, the prologue of John’s Gospel picks up the theme: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…The true light that enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
Darkness. We know what darkness is. We think of people living in the midst of war, conflict and violence around the world. We think of people living in poverty, hungry, without shelter, in other countries of course, but shockingly, here at home too. We think of people who suffer violence and abuse. We think of people facing serious illness, suffering depression, the bewildered and beleaguered, the overwhelmed.
We can all name the darkness. It is real. In Scripture the darkness is injustice, cruelty, poverty, sickness, oppression. And the darkness is also a world that has forgotten God, acting out of its collective amnesia.
Christmas each year, every year, wakes the world out of its forgetfulness, to turn us from darkness. And tiny twinkling lights remind the world that the light has come into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
We who follow the One whose birth we celebrate are those tiny twinkling lights. Like the lights on the houses, seemingly not casting much light around us, but carrying the promise, that there is more to come.
We mustn’t underestimate the light we emit, when we challenge injustice, care for the poor, stand with the victim, give to the poor, sit with the sick, the lonely, the depressed, and pray for every one of them. We have been enlightened by the true light, and that light shines out through who we are and what we do. Casting a little light, and carrying the promise that there is more to come, we foretell by our lives what has already taken place.
And there is more to come, and it has already taken place, that night in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. He came among us to awaken the world out of our forgetfulness of God, with a light so bright that we can see the darkness for what it truly is. And we are those tiny twinkling lights – lights to point to the one who is born to draw everyone back to God. May all our lights grow brighter this Christmas.
A blessed Christmas and a light-filled New Year to you all
