Advent II: Darkness and Light

There’s no getting around darkness. Pushing the hands of a clock back an hour doesn’t help. The days still seem shorter and the sun more reluctant to rise at this time of year. It’s not what anyone wants, but it’s what we’re given. This Advent, I’m beginning to see the value of the darkness. I don’t like it, but I can now see the important spiritual lesson it’s teaching, if I have “eyes to see.” 

Because we are waiting for Christmas, that day (season) when we celebrate God’s presence in the world and our lives, it is fitting that we wrestle with darkness. Yes, it’s all around us. There’s no getting around it. Whether in the news, our homes, or our hearts, the sun can sometimes seem particularly low in the shy at this time of year. Rather than wish the darkness away, Advent is an opportunity to accept the darkness - to stop and examine it and see what it’s trying to get us to see: God’s light, like a candle in a dark room, shines brighter in darkness.

Life makes more sense, or feels more manageable, when we arrange things in neat and tidy boxes - good here and bad there, happy here, sad there – but the wonder of our faith is that it’s bigger than any boxes we create. Everything belongs, as Richard Rohr famously reminded us . . . that means the good as well as the bad, the darkness as well as the light. As hard as we may try to embrace one and push the other aside, Advent is time to hold them both together.

In John’s Gospel, we are reminded that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Those are particularly comforting words at this time of year when darkness abounds. It doesn’t say the darkness goes away, just that the light is stronger.

I’m not sure there’s better news than that.