You drive to work and pass kids waiting for school buses in the dark, in the moonlight. How strange is that?! Time itself seems to have turned inside out.
By 5 or 6 PM, when you're driving home, dusk is already settling over the landscape. Involuntarily you begin to yawn, even if bedtime is five or six hours away. The bright mornings and gently-lit evenings of Summer seem like a distant, almost impossible, mirage. Your entire body and spirit are crying out silently "More light! Please, more light!"
There is never, ever enough light in December. We in the North-East are Light-Deprived. Vitamin D deprived, too. In fact, scientists say that the association between darkness and depression is well-established. Light deprivation causes profound changes in the brain. Too much darkness, which disrupts the body's clock, causes neurons in the brain that produce transmitters involved in emotion, pleasure, and cognition, to begin dying. This may be the mechanism underlying the darkness-related blues of seasonal affective disorder.
Light, on the other hand, enters our eyes and nerve signals are sent throughout our entire body to regulate various body systems. It's essential for our lives. For our ability to think, to feel, even to reproduce.
Is it any wonder that when Isaiah the prophet spoke of the Coming of the Messiah that he called this Messiah "Light"? Isaiah speaks of a darkness covering the earth, thick clouds covering the people - sin, and the loss of hope. The darkness of sin immobilizes us spiritually, upsets our spiritual systems of operating, affects our ability to think clearly, to feel positive about ourselves or our world. We become sunk in a spiritual dark night even more painful and radical than seasonal affective disorder.
What terrible darkness is it that shrouds a terrorist's soul so he can behead a child for being a Christian? What terrible darkness hardens a mother's heart so that she can stuff her newborn into a garbage can? What terrible darkness molds teenagers' minds that they can fire weapons at innocent school children or attack others with the weapons of cruel words on the Internet? What terrible darkness engulfs entire armies as they battle on and on while innocent civilians are felled by bullets, bombs, and famine?
The inhabitants of our world are wandering around in a never-ending night. Who can enlighten our path, lead us back to our true selves?
It is no accident that the shortest day of the year is the first day of Winter, usually December 21 or December 22. On that freezing, lightless day, we will feel most keenly our and the world's need for a Messiah to scatter our darkness, to inflame our minds, hearts, and souls with a new, clearer understanding of love, justice, mercy, truth, peace, and joy. On that shortest, darkest day, we can rejoice, because we know our Light Which Never Sets is coming on December 25! "Arise, shine, for your Light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you."
On these cold dark mornings, and even colder, darker nights, I sit in front of my fireplace and watch the constantly dancing flames, bask in their playful light and the heat that emanates out to me in wave after wave. And while I know we call Jesus the Light of the World and our Day Star, I have a different, more intimate name for Him, a name that tells me how He illuminates my home, my life, my hopes and dreams for my world.
Come, Lord Jesus, I say. Come be my warm, bright Fireplace during the long winter of my yearning. Remind me, over and over, that Your Light will always arise in my soul. Remind me, over and over, that Your Light will shine on in the world's darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it!