“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 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 1:1–5
How do you feel about the changing rhythms of the year? For me, November and December are okay… it is January and February that I find hard. I struggle with the darkness. Living in the countryside, I appreciate the seasons far more than when I was in a city with streetlights and indoor life flattening some of the differences. In November we have fireworks, and in December the village is festooned with thousands of fairy lights. I enjoy them as much as my children!
I don’t mind being forced to endure the dark months, though. Partly because the rewards of spring are so much greater, and partly because I want to dislike darkness. The longing for the light is a sweet longing. It is a picture of our longing for Jesus.
Isaiah 8:22 is one of the hardest verses in the Bible: “And they will look to the earth, but behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.”
The prophet is talking about the results of sin. This is where people are left in terrible judgment when they turn away from God, in a thick gloom of their own making. Having strode deep into the darkness and greedily sucked it into our lungs, we cannot escape it. This is the deserved fate of those who love darkness.
Yet, wonderfully, in the next two verses Isaiah will undo this terror with the promise of light. Isaiah 9:2 reads: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”
We deserve the darkness of sin, yet the Lord promised to save us from what we deserve. He promised the Light. John begins his Gospel by telling us that the Light has come. God himself, Jesus Christ the living Word, has come to his people. He is full of life, and that life is the very light by which we live. It is verse 5 that thrills me the most:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John begins his Gospel with this staggeringly glorious promise. We dislike the dark because it pictures our lives. We live in the darkness of suffering and sin. We suffer. We are sinned against. We sin. We live in the darkness; we long for the light.
And he has come! Jesus has come into the darkness so that we can walk in the light. Jesus has come, and the darkness will never overcome him. The Light shines, and he will never be put out.
Even in the darkness of February, the light shines. The stars glimmer with enticing beauty, and on a crisp day, the sun rises, and our hearts leap maybe higher for the brightness of that glory over the snow-dazzled horizon. The Light shines, and he will never be put out.
Part 2: The Witness to the Light
Part 3: The People of the Light
Part 4: The Glory of the Light
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