We are approaching one of the darkest times of the year. I think that’s why we so desperately need Advent. If we didn’t have the hope of a light that could shatter the darkest of darkness, winter would be much more ponderous than it already is.
There are all kinds of darkness in our lives as the calendar year comes to a close, too. I remember a time many years ago, I went into a store here in Glen Ellyn around this time of year. It was all decked out for Christmas and had that kind of subdued lighting that is supposed to make you feel all Christmassy. But all I experienced was a darkness and a gloom that made me have to run out of the store immediately. I later realized that it was because I was still grieving the death of my grandmother, and the approaching holidays made that so much more difficult for me.
There’s all kinds of darkness: grief, broken relationships, a feeling of being adrift in your life, sadness over patterns of sin or addictions. And it seems like this time of year, as the year comes to a close, as the days become shorter and the nights are darker, that some of us might feel the darkness more poignantly than at other times. I think that’s very natural.
It’s a good thing, then, that we have a hope that cannot be taken away and a Light that can pierce any darkness. We might cry out like the blind men, “Son of David, have pity on us!” It might not happen all at once as it did for the blind men in the Gospel, but we do have hope that our darkness will be made light. Because “out of gloom and darkness,” Isaiah tells us, “the eyes of the blind shall see.”
That’s why we light our Advent candles here in Church. Every week, the darkness is illumined just a little more, one candle at a time. Our life can be like that too if we have the faith that Christ can be our Light, even in our darkest times. As the Psalmist says, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; of whom should I be afraid?”