When I woke up this morning, I lingered in bed longer than I should have and yet it was still dark. While I appreciate experiencing the weather of all four seasons that we experience where I live, I don’t love the long dark nights of late fall and early winter.
Years ago I my pastor mentioned in a sermon that one of the reasons that Christmas is celebrated in December is because when the church (historically at the time mostly the church in the Northern Hemisphere) was deciding when to mark and honor the birth of Christ, it made sense to pick the darkest time of the year.
What better time to celebrate the coming of the Light of the World than during the darkest nights of the year.
While Christmas Day doesn’t fall exactly on the Winter Solstice, I am conscious every year of the shortening of the days.
It’s hard not to think about the fears that used to be associated with winter. The shadows of illness, hunger and scarcity that hung over our ancestors, especially the early settlers and indigenous people of my own continent.
Yet my modern life is not so different. Even though winter doesn’t usually mean a shortage of essential resources, it does bring potential weather emergencies, higher utility bills, increased winter illnesses and the seemingly inevitable holiday expenses that seem to only increase every year.
In the first century, they longed for the coming of the Messiah. In my own century we long for his return.
The nights are still long and dark, whether literally or metaphorically, and we all wait and hope for the return of the light.
” A longing heart
A world on fire
We want to see your face again
No man can know
The day, the hour
The many miles from Bethlehem
But every knee will bow and bend
And every tongue confess again
Emmanuel
We breathe your name
We watch, we wait”
-Nicole Nordeman, We Watch We Wait
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