It’s been a tough year this year.
It’s been a tough couple of months.
I hope you’re feeling some peace and hope this Christmas Eve, a little brightness under the overcast sky, but, let’s face it, even today you might be struggling.
We struggled through the first of this year, felt anxious through the middle of the year, felt disappointment, disgust, despair, maybe, this fall. And now as we come to the close of this year, our spirits are filled with apprehension for the next.
Like most years, our bold dreams set at last year’s new year, of who we could be and what we could do and what our world might become, have come at December to a mixed finish.
We always fall a little short of our aspirations, don’t we? Didn’t quite meet the mark we set for ourselves with last year’s resolutions. Which is not entirely a bad thing, because the reach of our vision proves the capacity of our soul. It’s good to dream big. It’s good to imagine and set intentions for the fulfilling, satisfying and splendid lives we will make for ourselves and the world, even if it’s more than we can pull off. Spiritual health is made, not by fitting our dreams to puny conceptions of our power, but by doing all we can, then measuring our success by how far we’ve come, not by how much still we have to go.
We have made progress this year. I’m certain you’ve made progress, an honest assessment would admit. So, there’s something, surely, to celebrate.
Yet it feels dark, doesn’t it? A weighty darkness, weighing down our spirits. A wet, soggy, slush on our soul.
And it is actually dark these days, physically dark. The days have been shortening for six months now, since the high summer of June, which feels so long ago.
I start to sense the change in October, and even long for it then, a little restful dark feels welcome after a blazing August. But the gathering darkness becomes undeniable in November with the shock of the end of daylight savings time shoving our day an hour into night.
By December first the darkness begins to turn oppressive. Day by day the afternoon gloom deepens until the darkest night arrives some time about here each year.
And here we are with the sun giving up before it’s even five o’clock.
It’s dark.
And then Christmas comes.
Just when we need it.
“Let Christmas come, its story told, when days are short and winds are cold;
let Christmas come, its lovely song, when evening’s soon and night is long.
Just when we need it, and with just the gloom-dispersing message that we need, too.
Let Christmas come, its great star glow
let Christmas come, its table gleam
Christmas assurances of light coming into the darkness.
A star in the night sky.
“Bring a torch, Jeannette, Isabella, bring a torch and quickly run.”
Stories of great light overcoming the darkness of our lives, promising great change to come.
But the greatest encouragement of Christmas to the people who walk in darkness, is the message of where we find that light.
We sing of the star in the sky, but it isn’t the brightness of the star that the Magi seek. That’s not the great light. The light they seek is inside the stable the star appears above, in a manger in the stable, within the baby in the manger.
The light is in the child. Not beyond and above and awesome but distant, the light is here, incarnate, Immanuel, God with us.
The spirit that lights that child can be our light, too, a divine spirit incarnate within each of us. No star appears above, but the light is here. We look within to find the saving spirit we seek today. That’s where we seek. That’s where we find the light we need these dark days: not in the sky, but here, within.
O come, O come, Emmanuel
Emmanuel shall come within as Love to dwell.
O come, you Splendor very bright
Emmanuel shall come within as Truth to dwell.
O come, you Dayspring,
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come within as Light to dwell.
Isaiah doesn’t say, “Arise, shine, for my light has come”
Isaiah says:
“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Lord rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
It is the divine light shining out of each of us that makes the great light.
When you decorate your house for Christmas, do you put up one gigantic spot light on the roof pointed directly into your neighbor’s living room? No, you put up a string of lights. Each light small unto itself, but light upon light, dozens of lights, hundreds of lights outlining the roof, and around each window, and threaded through the tree.
Each light, insufficient sometimes even to keep our own lives bright, but your light and mine together, and your light, and your, light, added together… together our single human lights, our personal glint of the divine, uncovered, and shining forth, together, we make the great light.
We make the great light Isaiah speaks of, for ourselves and all people walking in darkness in our world this year. We will show them our light. On those living in the land of deep darkness our light will dawn, and we will help them find their own light, too, and join their light to ours. “You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest. You have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.”
Your light will do this, not alone, but by learning the lesson of Christmas: your light, beside your neighbor’s light, lighting the next light, added to a further light, a string of lights, extending from soul to soul, reaching out, and down the street, house to house, shining brightly all over the town, nation to nation, the light of all people, a great light.