21st December
Darkness, Interrupted
One of the things I love about Christmas is candles. They don’t even need to be smelling of Nordic pine or strawberries, I just love the way that a single candle can light up a whole room and give out a warm glow. There’s something quite comforting about it.
Light is one of the great themes of Christmas and for many of us we’ll take the opportunity to light up our homes and maybe even half our streets. But it also reminds me of the greatest disruption the world has ever seen.
I think how John the apostle loved light. Maybe that’s why his account doesn’t start with Mary, some angels or a manger but with an echo of the opening words of the Bible: ‘In the beginning’.
The rest of this verse describes how God disrupts the meaninglessness, lifeless, nothingness by simply saying, ‘Let there be Light’. I love the way non-existence is shattered by God’s presence and in this moment gives birth to the whole of creation.
It is a light so powerful that it can never go out or be extinguished and will always flicker with hope in the toughest and darkest times of life.
But Genesis tells me something else…nothing can happen without interruption. It is why Jesus, ‘the Light of the World’, will always disrupt the darkness to give hope.
It is why John writes in his letter, ‘God is Light’ and ‘God is Love’. That’s because it is a luminous love, a love that won’t dim but wants to shine brightly in our world, and no more so than at Christmas with the birth of Jesus.
