Light Pierces the Darkness

Walter Wangerin writes about the light of Christ, which pierces the cold darkness of this world in his excellent advent devotional, Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom.

The light of Christmas shines into our darkness! We should be the walking dead. What we deserve, in fact, is the absence of God - a cold and cosmic isolation - for this is our sin, that we chose to be gods in the place of God. In the day we disobeyed we began to die. We should, therefore, be dwelling in a land of deep darkness, mistrust, hatreds, hopelessness, finality and death.

But here in a child comes God, the light! And light in darkness in a frightening thing. ("People loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" John 3:19.) O my friend, a self-examination both humble and true must cause us to tremble before the living God... But even as we feared, so do we rejoice when we hear the light say, "Don't be afraid. I have not come to punish but to give you life...I am the Savior born for you."

(Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Christ, Advent, Christmas and the Kingdom, pp. 60-61)