By Traci Rhoades
December 21 will bring on the winter solstice this year. The longest night. Much of the annual Advent season is spent in the dark. Although there are debates around the actual birthdate of Jesus, observing Advent in the dark days of winter has been a practice since at least the 4th and 5th centuries.
These cold December mornings, I wake up, turn on a lamp, pour myself a hot drink, then settle in with a blanket and read about such things as shepherds keeping watch over their flock at night (a nod to Linus and his blue blanket in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” perhaps the greatest film shepherd of all time).
Advent wreaths light up our sanctuaries, and if you light one as a family at home, candles illuminate kitchen tables as well. By this time, Advent is in full swing for many of us.
It’s Barbara Brown Taylor who taught me the dark is not all bad. In the beginning, God created this new thing called light, but darkness already was, and it remained. It was given a name, night. Light and darkness, night separated from day.
In her book, “Learning to Walk in the Dark,” Brown Taylor contends the dark can get a bad rep, both literally and metaphorically. Indeed, if we think about the various uses of this word, our eyes are opened (from darkness to light) to all the uses of dark and darkness we have in the English language.
She’s not taking about darkness as those evil forces separated from God, battling for our souls. In addition to the necessity of darkness (nighttime), she makes a case for what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul,” when for whatever reason, God seems beyond our reach.
There’s benefit in these times too.
Here are a few quotes from the book for your consideration:
“Our comfort or discomfort with the outer dark is a good barometer of how we feel about the inner kind.”
“New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
“Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
In her book, “Prayers in the Night,” Tish Harrison Warren points out, “We pray the church’s liturgical prayers at night — Compline — because they give us words when we don’t know what to say, and they give us better words to say than we might give.”
The more familiar I become with formal structures of the Church — things like the church calendar, liturgy, formal prayers and the revised common lectionary — I realize there are few if any coincidences. These spiritual forming activities didn’t come together happenstance. Patterned after Jewish practices introduced by God to shape the lives of his people by rhythms of worship, the Church offers us ways to forge our own connections with God.
So back to Advent, the season of waiting in the dark. The lyrics to the popular advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” tell us the birth of the Christ child came in a season of mourning. Israel found themselves in captivity, lonely exiles longing for their Savior. Into this historically dark time under Roman rule, the Christ child appears.
In our time, during the long and dark winter nights, amidst so much divisiveness, anger and confusion, our souls cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus.” He comes to us still.
For Christians, this is our great hope. After all the waiting, season after season of darkness, God will come again, and he will make all things right. All glory and praise to Christ Jesus who has promised to come again. We read in Revelation 22:5: “And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illuminate them; and they will reign forever and ever” (NASB).
The world has never known a time without darkness. Imagine! What a new earth it will be indeed, with everything illuminated by the light of Jesus. Spend some time reflecting on that in the early morning hours, while it is still dark, as you read your Advent reflections.
—————
Traci Rhoades is an author and Bible teacher who lives with her husband and daughter in West Michigan. She has written two books, “Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost,” and “Shaky Ground: What To Do When The Bottom Drops Out.”
December 21 will bring on the winter solstice this year. The longest night. Much of the annual Advent season is spent in the dark. Although there are debates around the actual birthdate of Jesus, observing Advent in the dark days of winter has been a practice since at least the 4th and 5th centuries.
These cold December mornings, I wake up, turn on a lamp, pour myself a hot drink, then settle in with a blanket and read about such things as shepherds keeping watch over their flock at night (a nod to Linus and his blue blanket in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” perhaps the greatest film shepherd of all time).
Advent wreaths light up our sanctuaries, and if you light one as a family at home, candles illuminate kitchen tables as well. By this time, Advent is in full swing for many of us.
It’s Barbara Brown Taylor who taught me the dark is not all bad. In the beginning, God created this new thing called light, but darkness already was, and it remained. It was given a name, night. Light and darkness, night separated from day.
In her book, “Learning to Walk in the Dark,” Brown Taylor contends the dark can get a bad rep, both literally and metaphorically. Indeed, if we think about the various uses of this word, our eyes are opened (from darkness to light) to all the uses of dark and darkness we have in the English language.
She’s not taking about darkness as those evil forces separated from God, battling for our souls. In addition to the necessity of darkness (nighttime), she makes a case for what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul,” when for whatever reason, God seems beyond our reach.
There’s benefit in these times too.
Here are a few quotes from the book for your consideration:
“Our comfort or discomfort with the outer dark is a good barometer of how we feel about the inner kind.”
“New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
“Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
In her book, “Prayers in the Night,” Tish Harrison Warren points out, “We pray the church’s liturgical prayers at night — Compline — because they give us words when we don’t know what to say, and they give us better words to say than we might give.”
The more familiar I become with formal structures of the Church — things like the church calendar, liturgy, formal prayers and the revised common lectionary — I realize there are few if any coincidences. These spiritual forming activities didn’t come together happenstance. Patterned after Jewish practices introduced by God to shape the lives of his people by rhythms of worship, the Church offers us ways to forge our own connections with God.
So back to Advent, the season of waiting in the dark. The lyrics to the popular advent hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” tell us the birth of the Christ child came in a season of mourning. Israel found themselves in captivity, lonely exiles longing for their Savior. Into this historically dark time under Roman rule, the Christ child appears.
In our time, during the long and dark winter nights, amidst so much divisiveness, anger and confusion, our souls cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus.” He comes to us still.
For Christians, this is our great hope. After all the waiting, season after season of darkness, God will come again, and he will make all things right. All glory and praise to Christ Jesus who has promised to come again. We read in Revelation 22:5: “And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illuminate them; and they will reign forever and ever” (NASB).
The world has never known a time without darkness. Imagine! What a new earth it will be indeed, with everything illuminated by the light of Jesus. Spend some time reflecting on that in the early morning hours, while it is still dark, as you read your Advent reflections.
—————
Traci Rhoades is an author and Bible teacher who lives with her husband and daughter in West Michigan. She has written two books, “Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost,” and “Shaky Ground: What To Do When The Bottom Drops Out.”
