The Light of the World: Darkness Won for But a Moment

Never have I known my eight-year-old son to burst into song, or at least, not into songs I know. He has his own tunes and lyrics he creates on the fly, but this Christmas, he has started singing a song I am familiar with, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” While I prefer Christmas hymns and traditional carols, I can certainly get behind him celebrating the season with song. To hear his wavering, untrained voice belt out, “And a happy new year!” as he tosses celebratory hands in the air brings me great happiness. I can’t help laughing along with him afterward.

The song he loves is so simple, yet it expresses him so well. To him, Christmas is a simple joy of family and love and receiving. He loves the gifts beneath the tree, the wonder of Santa coming to put presents in his stocking during the night, and the time we spend together. From the way he smiles and laughs, he imparts his joy to those around him. Good tidings he brings to you and your kin, good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year!

Christmas is not as simple when you become an adult. As adults, we’ve had time to make traditions and to break them. Maybe we’ve moved and are far from the family and friends we have always celebrated with. Maybe we’re lonely, seeing so many around us in relationships while we remain single. Perhaps we’ve lost someone special, someone who used to bring the brightness and cheer to Christmas and without whom we find the light of Christmas that much dimmer. The stress of the holidays might be it, trying to find gifts for everyone we can think of, bake all the goodies we intend, put up all the decorations from our closets, compose and send Christmas cards to dozens of friends and family, and plan the feast our family has come to expect. Maybe money is tight, and we don’t have the feast or cards or gifts. It might be our traditions don’t include Christmas and all this hullabaloo about the holiday seems ridiculous. Maybe Christmas is just hard.

Some years, my depression has gotten the better of me, and Christmas has been hard. I’ve sat with my family around the Christmas tree, ashamed that I haven’t gotten them anything, not one gift, nothing. Every time I removed the paper from one of their presents to me, the humiliation drove deeper into my heart. Guilt consumed me as it has all season, my self-condemnation, the indignity of struggling so hard just to take regular showers and eat, much less accomplish anything beyond that. I’d had no mental capacity to think of and purchase gifts for anyone. I had trouble getting out of bed most days. Christmas was hard. I felt like I had nothing, like mental illness has taken everything from me—my mental well-being, my relationships, my spiritual life, everything.

Yet it’s when we have nothing we can receive the most precious gift of all—light, life, and love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV), for “in him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4 CSB). Christmas carols galore reference this Light.

O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, The silent stars go by. But in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight.

The hopes and fears of all the years—every hope for something better, for purpose, for meaning; every fear of abandonment and rejection, every fear of death. Jesus’s birth answered every human desire and dread. Light, life, and love Himself came to us in human form, in a way we could understand, speaking to us on our level. While God “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:6 CSB), Jesus came to us saying, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5 CSB). On the day of Jesus’s birth, “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9 CSB). Jesus drew light, life, and love nearer to us, though they’d never been far. For the first time, these things were visible and tangible. God was among us.

As near as the light came to us, though, it remained inaccessible. In Exodus, God led the Israelites as a pillar of fire and light, always out of reach lest the Israelites perish in His glory. Isaiah prophesied destruction of Israel’s enemies by the same light, saying, “The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day” (Isaiah 10:17 CSB).

Even when Jesus entered the world, he told those he was teaching, “‘And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his works should be exposed’” (John 3:19-20 CSB). Jesus, the Light, walked among us, yet we disbelieved him, insulted him, condemned him, and crucified him. Darkness swallowed the light, and hope died with Jesus.

But only for a moment. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5 CSB). Jesus rose again! He offers us what he made visible and tangible—a relationship with God and the right to become children of God. God walked among us as a man, and because of it, we can walk with Him as the eternally redeemed. This is the greatest gift we can receive, and it is available to the financially able and to the impoverished, to the loving family member and to the estranged, to the married person and to the single person, to the rejoicing and to the mourning. It is available to the Christian and to the Muslim, the Hindu, the atheist, and the occultist if only they would seek God, if only they would reach out for Him. He is not far from any of us (Acts 17:27).

Jesus tells us, “‘While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light’” (John 12:46a CSB). Jesus invites us into his radiance and splendor, asking us to become part of it. Paul tells us, “you are all children of light, children of the day” (1 Thessalonians 5:5a CSB). God’s gift to us is not only reconciliation through Jesus but also an invitation into an eternity of Him—of His light, His presence, His majesty, His kindness, His approval, and His love.

I am a Christian, but I don’t experience these things, you might say. There is a strange paradigm we live in called the “already-not-yet”—we are already forgiven and brought into fellowship with God through faith in Christ, but we do not yet experience the fullness of that reality. C. S. Lewis put it this way in The Weight of Glory:

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

We are in the light, we are children of light, we walk in fellowship with the Light, but we are not yet the light. We are not yet fully healed and free of our sinful nature, and thus, our minds and hearts function in a shadow of what is real, discerning the shape but not the substance.

Yet one day, for those whom faith in Jesus has redeemed, “night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5 CSB). One day, God will raise up a city where there is “no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (Revelation 21:23-24 CSB). This harkens back to something Isaiah prophesied:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord shines over you. For look, darkness will cover the earth, and total darkness the peoples; but the Lord will shine over you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to your shining brightness. (Isaiah 60:1-3 CSB)

There was another night, another darkness, during which the Lord shone over us and kings came in their splendor to worship the true King. It was a foreshadowing. It was a foretaste of glory and hope, a miracle. It was Christmas.

Growing up, I understood Christmas was magical, but I didn’t understand why. Like my son, I attributed its magic to the gifts, the generosity, and the time with loved ones. Little did I understand it was much deeper than that. The miracle is much more than the appearance of a rotund, bearded man coming through a chimney to deliver gifts. Rather, “Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17 CSB). The miracle was a child, a human being, in whom the fullness of God dwells, who lived to die, who grew up to be killed by those he came to save. The miracle is a love so grand, so unending, so beautiful, it would crucify deity to redeem humanity. Because of it, life and Light are available to all, no matter what state we are in. So if we are rejoicing like my son, let us receive the gift of grace from God with thanksgiving. And if we are mourning like I have done, let us humble ourselves to recognize there is a higher reality than our hurt, that someday God will wipe every tear away. It is okay to mourn, and if you mourn, I mourn with you, but I also remind you of a grace deeper than sin and love deeper than pain. May you seek and find it this Christmas!