The lights in our house are driving me crazy. Some fixtures will work one day, quit working the next day, and then start working again out of nowhere. This week there’s no rhyme or reason as to why two out of three lights in our bathroom vanity fixture have gone out. I’ve tried new bulbs, different wattage bulbs, rotating the bulbs, clapping my hands at the bulbs… and still nothing.
Have you noticed that shopping for lightbulbs now is a major ordeal? There are no less than a thousand options on the bulb aisle. I don’t understand wattage or LED technology. I just want the lights to match and to come on when I flip the switch. I need light in all the dark places. How hard can this be?!
A few years ago we had a faulty Christmas tree. It was a live tree, so we carefully hung multiple strands of white lights on it only to discover the middle strand had an electrical short in it. So while the top and bottom of the tree lit up beautifully, the mid-section would intermittently go dim. It was maddeningly difficult to fix.
Whether we’re dealing with an old house or an uncooperative tree, it’s hard to keep the lights on. And I’m learning that when you’re living in the Central Time Zone, you need ALL the lights to come on at 4:00 PM when the sun starts setting! What in the world? I will need a light therapy lamp by mid-month because there is so much darkness before bedtime.
Darkness and light. Darkness and light. We can’t escape the tension between the two. It’s all around us… and even within us.
For many years I thought of Advent mostly as a countdown to Christmas Day and a good opportunity to eat a tiny piece of chocolate with my breakfast for 25 days in a row. There is truth in the notion that it’s an expectant time, but the word “advent” literally means “coming.” This season reminds us to look back at that coming of Jesus as a prophecy fulfilled and to look forward to the second coming of Jesus when all will be made right as it is brought into His perfect light.
Advent is about waiting in this uncomfortable space between darkness and light. But part of our great hope and reason for joy in this season is that the Light of Christ didn’t leave when he ascended. Until he returns and in the meantime of the here and now, we are the chosen bearers of it.
Maybe that’s what this season primarily asks of us: that we keep working to keep our lights on and our trees lit up… looking for light and finding ways to pierce dark places with hopeful flickers of it.
There is no shortage of dark places all around us: lonely people, dead-end jobs, miserable marriages, broken families, diseased bodies, empty wombs and abandoned rooms. There are places and seasons where the darkness is so heavy, so pervasive that it takes our breath away. It’s naive at best and negligent at worst to pretend that darkness is not an ever-present reality in our hearts and our homes. Our world is full of hurts and horrors, sin and sadness.
BUT, Jesus.
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.
Isaiah 9:2
A poorly lit bathroom or a half-lit tree is proof of the difference even a few lights can make. Every watt counts.
This busy Christmas, this dreary winter, this coming year… we have a choice. We can be people who let the darkness take hold, or we can be people who don’t give up trying to keep the lights on.
And no one needs that reminder more than I need it myself this season.
”The burden God places on each of us is to become who we are meant to be. We are most fully ourselves when Christ most fully lives in us and through us. The mother shines brightest with her child in her arms, the father when he forgives his wandering son, and the artist when he or she is drawing attention to grace, by showing the pinprick of light overcoming the darkness in the painting, or the story, or the song. The world knows darkness. Christ came into the world to show us light. I have seen it, have been blinded by it, invaded by it. I will tell its story.”
Andrew Peterson
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