by: Pastor Kim, Interim Lead Pastor
One of the joys of Christmas is taking time off from work and the normal pressures of life. We often schedule our vacation to give ourselves a break. There is one truth however that continually stares us in the face, “Life doesn’t stop for Christmas.” We can’t schedule a vacation from life; it just keeps coming. For some of us this last December was a wonderful time of gathering with family and celebrating the joys of the Christmas season. Perhaps for you it was one of the best. For some it was perhaps very hard on some level or disappointing. Family tensions or problems can remind us of the brokenness in our family or perhaps covid concerns drastically changed family plans. For some, and probably the hardest of all, it was a Christmas without someone, someone that you couldn’t imagine having Christmas without. There is a sadness surrounding all the lights and celebration that comes with the realization that the difficulties of life have come crashing in uninvited. It is a sort of darkness that no number of lights can overcome.
John writes about that darkness in his Gospel to us. He writes, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Those words were penned in some very difficult times. It is very possible that many of the twelve disciples that had been his beloved brothers had been killed. Very possible the apostle Paul had been beheaded In Rome not to mention countless other believers that had been persecuted and martyred for their faith. When John refers to the darkness, he knew what he was talking a about. Those days were some very dark days with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem possibly already having taken place.
Life didn’t stop for John but there is something else that doesn’t stop as well, “The Light” shines in the darkness and no matter how dark the darkness, it cannot overcome it. No matter what the circumstance the light continues to shine and nothing can extinguish that light. That is why it is called the true light. One day he is the only light we will need. We won’t need the sun and the stars or the moon but he will be our light.
This new year the one thing we all can celebrate no matter how difficult life may be or how disappointing the circumstances is this truth, “The light shines in the darkness” and “the darkness has not overcome it.” As we enter into this new year and all of the unknowns we carry with us from this past year, we can be sure of one amazing truth. No matter what the darkness of 2021, there is a light we have that will overcome it; that is one thing we can count on.