In Advent we turn on the lights
Close your eyes. Count to ten. Breathe.
Advent is here.
To riff on a John Lennon quote, in Advent we take a white-knuckled grip on the hope that everything is going to be okay in the end. Today, if things are not okay, then it’s not yet the end.
“I can’t believe it’s so dark outside.”
That’s become almost a daily refrain in our household since we turned our clocks back at the close of Daylight Saving Time a few weeks ago.
And that comment typically gets followed up with, “And it’s only getting worse for another month.”
Darkness creeps. It’s the season of Advent.
It was my daughter’s birthday yesterday, and so we let her pick where we should eat lunch after church. She picked the burger and ice cream place down the street. As my family ate together, I noticed that five out of six other tables occupied in the restaurant where people sitting by themselves. I wondered, who eats alone at Braums on a Sunday afternoon?
Loneliness is a darkness that creeps.
Ten years ago, my wife and I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas in a hospital waiting room while her mom clung to life in the intensive care unit. We were there long enough to watch other families enter with shards of hope, grieve, and then leave.
Anxiety over loved ones is a darkness that creeps.
For those of us living in the northern hemisphere, every day from late June to late December is a little darker than the day before. Some days it feels like a great metaphor of the world, doesn’t it?
Can you imagine living before people understood the physics of the earth? What if each day gets darker and darker until the night swallows us completely? What if this is the year that it doesn’t reverse and we never see the light again?
Is it that hard to imagine? What if this is the year things don’t get better next year?
Hopelessness is a darkness that creeps.
The darkest night of the year is coming.
God moves in, part 1
Darkness is the very beginning of our story.
“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (Genesis 1:2).
There was darkness, and that is where God was to be found. Right in the thick of it. And God spoke: Let there be light. And there was.
In Advent we turn on the lights.
But humanity rebelled, and the darkness came flooding back in.
In the book of Exodus we find a pattern, a movement of God, that sets the stage, that shows us what kind of God that God is: God sees, God rescues, God provides. God moves in.
First, God is a God who sees in the darkness.
“They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exodus 2:23, 24).
Second, God rescues. He declares a holy war against the pantheon of Egyptian deities, parts the Red Sea, and swallows the Egyptian army. The people march to freedom.
Third, God provides. He leads them to the mountain where he gives the Torah, the Law, the Instructions, the Wisdom. A new and different way to be human beings. A way to be human as humans were originally meant to be.
Last, God moves in. The last part of Exodus deals with specific details about constructing a tabernacle, a tent for God to live in. God wants to live with is people. He moves into the neighborhood.
The whole trajectory of the book of Exodus moves from God being “somewhere out there” to God being right here in our midst.
This is the story of Advent.
God moves in, part 2
In the animated movie Aladdin, Robin Williams’ genie provides the classic paradox of being a genie in a bottle:
“PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER! Itty bitty living space.”
And this is the perfect picture of the awesome miracle that is the Incarnation, when God became a human being. This is what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown.
Advent is for remembering that God has already shown up in the person of Jesus once in history and that he’s promised to do it again.
After all, God moving in is the very end of the story, too:
“Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them” (Revelation 21:3).
Just how is God going to show up?
When I was a kid, Advent was all about those calendars where you opened the flaps, a day at a time. But I’ve learned that Advent is a story. It’s the best story ever. It’s the story of a God with phenomenal cosmic power who chooses to become a little, fragile, vulnerable baby. All of the resources of heaven and earth at his disposal, and this God chose the limitations of becoming a human baby.
Is this really the best rescue plan the God of the universe could imagine?
These weeks we celebrate the Anticipation known as Advent. We await the Incarnation of God in flesh and blood and bone. We wait and we wait and we wait, and even though the darkness creeps, we hold on to the hope that the light is coming.
God sees the suffering in the world. And God is doing something about it. And God is moving in.
“So the Word became human and made his home among us” (John 1:14).
In Advent, the lights get turned on.
Advent is revolution
In Advent, we lean into the darkness, not out of resignation, not out of acquiescence. We lean in because we remember the Genesis words. We remember that where there is darkness, that’s where God is already at work, and we can have the courage to join him right there.
In Advent, the Church collectively joins hands and says a great, defiant “NO!” to the darkness. Advent is our resistance. The world needs us boldly going toe-to-toe with the darkness.
What better day of the year to celebrate the coming of Jesus than the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year, when the day shines longer tomorrow.
“Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace” (Luke 1:78, 79).
In Advent, we trust that everything is going to be okay in the end. Things are not okay, so we know the end is still coming.
Close your eyes. Count to ten. Breathe.
Turn some lights on.