Every one has dark times. Times when they feel lost, depressed, alone, mistake ridden and regretful. We can all remember times when we have felt like this. Some of us may be experiencing a state like this right now. There are many prophecies in the Word that predict the coming of the Lord Jesus and describe the state of the world at the time of His coming. One recurring theme throughout these prophecies is “darkness”. This darkness describes the spiritual environment at the time before the Lord’s Advent. People were shrouded with a cover of darkness so that spiritually they were very much in the dark–incapable of making any decisions with true clarity or based on truth. So the resulting atmosphere of this world was one of selfishness, greed, anger, hate, envy, etc. It is into this dark world that the Lord, from His love for us, came as an infant. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” [Isaiah]
If we consider our own dark times we know that to get pulled out of them we needed something to change. We are taught that the Lord’s coming is like the morning at dawn that fills the mind with gladness. I remember as a younger person spending some long nights afraid of the dark, or afraid of the situation I was in. There was tremendous fear during those long nights. But as the new day began to dawn a new hope would arise within me and the fear and trembling of the night would slowly fade into a new hope and a fearless beginning for a new day. This is an analogy of what the Lord’s coming, that we celebrate at Christmas, did for the entire world.
Just like a newborn infant has to grow, develop and mature, so does the Lord’s presence within our lives. We may desire to change our behaviors, feelings and thoughts, but we need to acknowledge that the actual change will take a long time to come into fullness–it is a life’s work. This newborn hope can grow and strengthen and its impact be felt more and more as we keep going with the work the Lord sets before us. When we do our part His love and light can take root and provide overall systemic change. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” [Luke 2:52]
We read: “Seeing that ‘the morning’ in the proper sense means the Lord, His coming, and so the approach of His kingdom, what else is meant by ‘the morning’ becomes clear, namely the rise of a new Church, for that Church is the Lord’s kingdom on earth. That kingdom is meant both in a general and in a particular sense, and indeed in a specific sense, the general being when any Church on earth is established anew; the particular, when we are being regenerated and becoming new people, for the Lord’s kingdom is in that case being established in us and we are becoming the Church; and the specific, as often as good flowing from love and faith is at work with us, for this is what constitutes the Lord’s coming. Consequently the Lord’s resurrection on the third morning, Mark 16: 2, 9; Luke 24: 1; John 20: 1, embodies in the particular and the specific senses the truth that He rises daily, indeed every single moment, in the minds of regenerate persons.” [AC 2405:8]
I hope for you this Christmas season that as the new light dawns on Christmas morning that you can invite the Lord to be born anew with you and for His presence to grow and to be felt within you, and that that light may touch others.
