Christmas is a festival of lights. Hanukkah celebrates light that lasted eight days. I love how my guest, Terry Murphy has tied together the coming of light through the ages. May the Light of Christ shine in and through you during this season.
Light from the Darkness
by Terry Murphy
In the beginning, creation was waiting in the dark, groaning to be delivered of chaos. So God demanded light to come forth from the darkness and out of the depths of emptiness, a sun blazed and stars flashed. Soon after mankind was formed, he too was waiting in a darkness created by his own sin. Perplexed in his troubles, Man squinted through the haze of his limited vision and wailed for relief.
It would be eons later, but black night was once more forced open and an explosion of stars accompanied a brilliant angelic army. They declared the arrival of unparalleled Light to the startled band of shepherds standing guard on a Bethlehem hillside.
Today, as December and January spin around the darkest time of year, we fend off the night by filling our streets and houses with lights. To cheer our hearts, perhaps. To remind ourselves that somewhere out there light still lives, still promises to come.
It is the season to make merry with food, with gifts, with bulbs on the tree. But without a heart connection to the Bread of Life, the Gift of God, the Light of the World, our merriness is as artificial as the glow in our decorations.
Advertisers may celebrate Christmas as a season of “giving,” “hope” and “a sense of wonder.” But the name of the holiday demands it be Christ’s Mass—Christ’s celebration—of the day this incomparable Light revealed God’s likeness in human form; proving God cares, God sees, God knows not only what we’re like, but what we need. Though we feel hidden and covered in darkness, His vision penetrates and our “darkness is as light” to Him (Psalm 139:11-12).
Christmas is all the more worth celebrating because of what happened thirty-three years Jesus’s birth. One more time darkness wrapped the earth as Light hung on a tree called the cross. Suspended between Heaven and earth, He absorbed Man’s contempt for God as well as God’s wrath against Man. Under the onslaught, this great Light finally flickered out.
For three days the disciples waited in the dark, hiding and groaning in grief. Then God spoke again and Light punctured a hole in the darkness, delivering emancipation from the guilt and shame of sin and its oppressive control over hearts and minds to mankind.
So come, let us adore Him this Christmas.
The Light of Life has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it. [Click to Tweet]
Terry Murphy is a writer and speaker with with articles that have appeared in several different periodicals including Bible Advocate Online, The Upper Room, Mature Living and The Christian Communicator. Terry lives with her happily retired and fully Irish husband in an empty nest located in the thriving metropolis of Gresham, OR (just east of a small town called Portland). You can see her latest musings onwww.disciplespost.com
Candle and Cross images courtesy of Morguefile.com
I love candle light in my windows during December
One of my favourite verses, that I often go to when life gets dark is this John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.”
Light is at it’s most brilliant, when it has to contend with the dark. And it always wins.
Alleta, that is one of my favorite verses too. Such HOPE. He is the light–what a promise of His everlasting presence.
This was really powerful. Thank you Terry and Jeanne. I’ve been thinking about how dark our world is these days…
Thanks for your thoughts, Cathy. I really enjoy Terry’s insights. And, you are right–it seems so dark these days. Yet, according to His word, it has always been. He is the light that pierces the darkness! He is the Light that brings Truth.