Good morning…
This Christmas Eve morning many in our country wake in the dark to severe cold. Brutal weather. Derailed travel plans. Several go without. Without heat. Without a home. Without loved ones for the first time this Christmas season. All of us face stressors. Uncertainties run rampant. Expectations pile high. Pressures ratchet up, please, perform, perfect.
On a more internal level, I caught the severe cold our son brought home from college. High fever. Headache. Chills. Cough. Congestion. Sneezing. Runny nose. I dropped out of our family dinner and put myself to bed. Fifteen hours later, I woke to eat some soup, then drifted back to sleep for five more groggy hours. As I finally blinked awake in the dark with the curtains drawn, my mind felt silent solidarity with friends who are battling cancer, loved ones recovering from surgery, many who are experiencing deep darkness before the hope of a new dawn.
I prayerfully savored the words written this week by Elizabeth, the 37 year old mother of three who just completed her third round of chemo to fight her advanced colon cancer. “Our dear neighbors illuminated the streets of our neighborhood with luminaries the past three nights,” explained Elizabeth. “It’s been such a sweet picture of the light piercing the darkness. It seems very fitting that these luminaries were lit for the final night on December 21st. Winter Solstice. The darkest day of the year. Every day of the fall has been getting darker toward today. But tomorrow? It starts getting lighter. In tiny tiny increments. But light is coming. It doesn’t get any darker than today. Light is coming.”
Into our cold, dark, struggling world, being born on Christmas morn is the One whose very presence assures, “I am the light of the world.” The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it (John 1:5, NLT).
As we gather in churches this evening, reverently singing Silent Night, we will light one candle at a time, neighbor by neighbor, and the light of the living Christ will spread through us all to dispel the world’s darkness.
…Sue…
