The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
Isaiah 9:2 (ESV)
We live in a dark world. Call me Scrooge, but I don’t think it’s helpful to ignore the realities of pain and evil that grip the lives of people all over the world. Some of us experience these things more than others, but none of us move through life untouched by the horrors surrounding us. Ignoring these things doesn’t help.
The only thing that helps is hope. Hope that one day death won’t be the ultimate reality. Hope that pain will cease and love will triumph. Hope that light will shine in the dark places and drive out the evil that lurks there. Christians believe that hope came in the form of a baby over two thousand years ago. That little baby, we believe, is Emmanuel – God with us!
Think about that for a second.
God, the creator of the universe and all that is in it. God, the supreme power and authority, author of all life and knowledge. That God didn’t ignore the pain and despair that plague the human race, didn’t stand aloof, unconcerned with our plight. Nor did He decide to start over with a new project. Instead, He chose to enter into that with us. He chose to subject Himself to the same realities of darkness and pain. If that was all the gospel was, it would still be good news. The God who created us loved us enough to come to us and suffer with us.
But that is not the end of the gospel story. Emmanuel, God with us, subjected Himself to the darkness. Death spent all it had to destroy Him. But the reason we have hope today is that all death had wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to conquer the One who is Life itself.
John 1:4-5 says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The life that is in Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome by it. That life, that light, is available to all of us. It is here now.
I’m in Vietnam, a place where it is illegal to share the hope that I have in Jesus. Still, light is breaking through the darkness. The hope of Christmas is here in the songs that play in all the stores, in the decorations that adorn all the shops and restaurants and hotels. The hope of Christmas has come to Vietnam in the people that have chosen to leave their homeland and their families to share God’s love in a place that desperately needs it. It has come in the Christmas production they put on every year to introduce the idea that maybe death and pain don’t get the final say.
As I write this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop, listening to O Holy Night play over the speakers, and I pray that the weary world would rejoice and that each of the souls in here would feel their worth. That realization comes with the appearance of Jesus and the revelation that God loved us enough to do something about our suffering. He came to be with us, and He has never left us.
So rejoice! The world is dark, but the Light has come. That is the hope we have, and that is why we celebrate!
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
Matthew 1:23 (ESV)
