This Christmas feels extraordinarily peaceful for me. It follows a hard semester, in which I was transplanted into a new situation of life and a new mindset. I'm still in the middle of making some tough decisions about my future (because current society requires me to make decisions at the measly age of 19 that will directly affect the rest of my adult life). But yet, there's this huge sense of peace in all of it, and I've realized that it's specifically related to the Christmas story. God has been planting some interesting ideas in my mind, through Christmas carols and through very vivid images. Today, I want to share these carols and word-pictures with you. They all deal with a specific theme: light.
And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
~I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
The ideas of peace really all began when I saw some chalk letters written on the sidewalk at my school a few months ago: "God's not dead". Yes, the movie and the song have made this saying sound cliche. But just the vision of God working under the surface of my public university was a striking and beautiful picture. Admittedly, there's a lot of junk on my campus. But, there's also so much life and hope, as there probably is in every place. No amount of darkness can squelch the evident presence of God. Seeing these words on the sidewalk brought a verse to my mind. Since then, it has become my current favorite Bible verse.
"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."
John 1:4-5
Son of God, love's pure light,
Radiant beams from
Thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace
~Silent Night
This verse led me to my next image. It started with a question: what does darkness truly feel like? Several years ago, I visited Mammoth Cave with my family. At one point of the tour inside the cavern, our guide led us into a huge, cathedral-like chasm. We all stood inside this huge space and he asked us to turn off our lights for a minute. As all of the people in our group flipped off the switches on their flashlights and lanterns, the entire area fell into blackness and a cold chill ran down my spine. It takes first-hand experience inside a cave or other completely enclosed space to really understand this sensation of total darkness. Your eyes cannot adjust and begin to see after a few seconds, as would happen in a mostly dark place. There is no light for your eyes to use; even after they try to adjust themselves, switching from the sensitive, light-responsive cones to the night-vision rods, nothing happens and the darkness cannot be corrected. Standing in a place of complete darkness was equivalent to blindness. My remembrance of the dark cave is so similar to our world, before Jesus Christ was born to save us. The people tried to adjust themselves, just as our eyes attempt to work with the darkness and find sight in it. But, nothing works in complete darkness. This is exactly why we needed Jesus; he came to fix our darkness, our sin problem. A phrase in "Silent Night" is strikingly relevant to this darkness/light comparison: "dawn of redeeming grace". Jesus's birth was a new beginning. Let's not forget just how significant His arrival was; it was the dawn of redeeming grace: a new plan, a new Light, as never seen before. It's just as John Newton wrote in "Amazing Grace": "I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see."
It also ties back to the writing of Matthew the disciple:
"The people dwelling in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death,
on them a light has dawned."
Matthew 4:16
"O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above your deep and dreamless sleep,
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears of all the years,
Are met in thee tonight."
~O Little Town of Bethlehem
So in the end, it all boils down to one statement: Jesus is the Light of the World. Yeah, I assume that you've heard that one before. "Jesus is the Light" is a fact so overstated to any American who have lived around Christians or been inside a church that it's probably like someone telling you that "dogs bark" or "you have ten fingers". But, it means so much more than that. It means that we, as Christ-followers, are also the light of the world (Matthew 5:16). This is so very difficult in a world that continues to live in darkness and reject Jesus's gift of grace.
Now, please follow my train of thought for a second here. Whenever I hear the word "darkness", it reminds me of one of my favorite songs ever: Ode to Sleep by Twenty One Pilots (a non-Christian, alternative band that tackles deep issues of darkness and depression). The song has one line that stands out, through its melody and its repetition: "I'll stay awake, cause the dark's not taking prisoners tonight."
Here's a rhetorical question for you: what does darkness do to us as human beings- literal darkness I mean? Well, it causes us to feel sleepy (see the connection to the TOP song...?). The spiritual darkness surrounding us does the exact same thing; it tries to put us to sleep- into apathy, self-absorption, and status quo.
There's another image that illustrates this "spiritual sleep" beautifully; It's a verse in a song from my early childhood, "This Little Light of Mine".
"Hide it under a bushel, No! I'm gonna let it shine. Hide it under a bushel, no! I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."
After I learned what a bushel even was (it's a basket), my child brain decided that hiding a candle under a bushel was the dumbest concept known to humankind. What's the point of a light if it's hidden away? But now that I'm older, I realize that metaphorically, I've done it so many times. That's exactly what it looks like to fall asleep: putting our light- our hope and trust in Christ- on the back-burner or in a forgotten desk drawer. Ultimately, when we are apathetic about our faith and our belief in the significance of Jesus's birth, we're hiding our lights under a bushel. And yes, a light hidden under a basket is pretty darn useless. As if I hadn't referenced enough random songs already, I also imagine the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" when I think about the "sleep" concept. The people of Bethlehem were in a deep, dreamless sleep when Jesus arrived. The Light of the world was literally within their reach; they were within a minute's walk from seeing the Savior of the world in person and worshipping Him. But from what we know, many of them simply missed it as they slept on. Ugh, that's awful, isn't it? As already discussed in this post, this Light matters so much more than any of us can comprehend. So consequently, each of us need to decide to make it matter in our lives.
So this Christmas, what will you do with the Light- the living, undefeated light that miraculously came down to earth and brought a dawn of redeeming grace, then bestowed some of that brilliant light on you? Don't just hide it or forget what it means for you and to the entire world. Even in the darkest nights, when God doesn't seem to be responsive or when He doesn't make any sense to you, trust in His unending love- the very love that sent His son on Christmas night to die for you. Don't miss the beauty and life at the real root of this crazy commercialized season, and the remaining 11 months after it. Stay awake. Cause the dark's not taking prisoners tonight.
