It is difficult sometimes to believe that in our present darkness, whether that is one’s personal experience with the world, or something more global… that hope can grow again in the deepest recesses of our minds.
After all the more we feel isolated… …surrounded by foe… …or locked into a way of life that is simply not us, …we tend to believe all too quickly that we are alone and will remain so.
And when our thinking starts along that path, we come to feel the mounting pressure of hopelessness.
But stop for a moment.
In the beginning of creation, in Genesis chapter 1, God already threw back the darkness, declaring “Let there be light.”
And when darkness set itself over the world again, God would do in Bethlehem what is so natural to Him, ‘He would come to his own, and the darkness still could not overcome him.’
You see, we have our thinking backwards.
St. Paul said ‘If Christ is with us, who can be against us?’
And if we are steeped in darkness, the kind that Charles Dickens called ‘painful and oppressive’… …Then Christmas is for you.
It is time to hope again. This Advent, let there be light.
Comments