Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate Christmas at the darkest time of the year. Around the time of the winter solstice, the days are shortest, the sunlight is most fleeting, and the nights seem to stretch on endlessly. For many people, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a real daily experience that leads them to feel more depressed than any other time of the year. During these days, we yearn for the sunlight, we bask in every moment of brightness we can get, and we even purchase artificial lights to mimic the light from the sun when it can be difficult to find.
I think it’s very fitting that our celebration of Christmas takes place at the darkest time of the year, because it gives us an opportunity to understand the spiritual realities of Christmas in a real, embodied, and physical way. All throughout Scripture, darkness is used as a symbolic representation of the brokenness of sin that has invaded and destroyed the world. More than anyone else, the apostle John would speak of darkness all throughout his gospel account. In John 1:5, we read of Jesus’ entrance into the world that “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Later, in John 3:19, we see that John equates darkness with sin and evil when he says, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
Perhaps most pointedly at all, after Jesus had been crucified and it seemed as though the spiritual forces of evil had prevailed, Matthew tells us that, “From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.” (Matthew 27:45).
Ever since the fall of humanity into sin, there has been great darkness in the world, and God’s people would have felt that darkness in a very particular way in the moments leading up to the birth of Jesus. Just like today, as we long for the days to lengthen once again, God’s people had spent hundreds of years waiting in silence for the promises of God to be fulfilled without any idea when that day would finally come. The time leading up to Jesus’ birth was a time of waiting, and as we observe the Advent season, the dark nights are also a time of waiting for us—waiting for the light of the world to appear to cast away the darkness and to bring light to all of our hearts.
And so, whenever you feel the weight of physical darkness that surrounds us this time of year, let yourself be reminded of the spiritual darkness that God’s people waited so long to see lifted, and let that darkness cause us to look forward with even greater anticipation and joy to the light of Jesus, both in the celebration of his birth and as we wait for him to finally return in the last day!
All the best,
Luke