Lighten Our Darkness

Is it just us, or is anyone else ready for something good to break into the world and disrupt 2020? The story of Jesus’ birth is just the counterpoint we need at the end of a long year. And we’ll get there in just over a month, but there’s a lot of groundwork that needs laid first… pre-Advent prep work to remind us of our need for a savior in the first place. The story of God-made-flesh in Jesus begins long before any shepherds or angels or magi show up at the manger; before the star rose over Bethlehem to guide the way; before Mary & Joseph. The Messiah’s story starts in the very beginning.

“Let there be light,” God says in Genesis 1, and suddenly light becomes a thing when it had been no thing at all. “And it was good!” But fast forward to sometime around 700 BC and it seems to the people of Judah that the light is growing dimmer by the day: the Judeans are being betrayed from without and within; their northern, sister kingdom (Israel) is plotting with Syria to invade them; they keep losing large areas of what they thought was promised land from God; and the Assyrian empire rules over Judah with violence and military might, eventually exiling the people of Judah from their homeland.

The people so yearned for relief, for a messiah figure from the line of David to deliver them from oppression. And it’s right at this point, right when things were about as bad as they could get for the people of Judah, that the prophet Isaiah speaks a word of hope into the suffering of his people:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined… For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. (Isaiah 9:2-7)

The people of Judah had hit rock bottom. Hoping against hope and desperate for relief from their suffering, they prayed for a new king—a messiah—to rescue them from the darkness of it all. Imagine you and your people are at your absolute lowest, ready to give up hope, when all of a sudden you hear the voice of God say: “You who walk in darkness (you whose lives are filled with suffering), you have seen a great light; you who lived in a land of deep darkness—on you light has now shined.” What a relief!

Against the background of this darkness, the prophet Isaiah announces the dawning of light. Into the darkness of chaos and despair, Isaiah’s words shine a light that illuminates the central claim of the Gospel: rescue is coming. To those who sit in darkness, or fear, or failure, or want… Rescue is coming. And it is coming in the form of a little child, a child who knows how to carry our burdens with us; a child who knows how to remove the yokes, break the rods, and destroy the instruments of war that oppress us. It’s a child who’s humble enough yet powerful enough to walk through the “land of deep darkness,” and not only come out the other side, but transform the darkness while he’s there. Where do you see this light dawning?

*End this devotional by listening to “Lighten Our Darkness” by Alexander L’Estrange (video below). This will sound familiar to those of you who tune in for Evening Prayer.

Lighten our Darkness by Alexander L’Estrange, perfumed by Duke Vespers Choir