It’s nearly 4:00 as I write this. The sun is already on the western horizon. Within an hour, it will dip below the Continental Divide. Darkness falls.
That deep, heavy, winter darkness.
The Christmas season tends to be described as the most depressing and lonely for many. For others, the season is something to sneer at for its empty commercialism and tiresome stupid Christmas songs.
However, the church body—whether it is out of concern for the downtrodden or for disdain for the materialism—tries to ignore the Christmas season for as long as possible.
Sundays look and feel just like any other Sunday of the year. No trees, lights, or candles—the very symbols of hope—will grace the sanctuary. It will likely be another couple of Sundays before a carol might even be incorporated in the Sunday worship.
The hope—the anticipation—of the coming of our Savior needs more remembrance, more celebration, more proclamation and excitement than just the obligatory Christmas service.
For the lonely, sad, and depressed, they need to be reminded the coming of Emmanuel—God with Us—who stepped into this broken world to make things right once and for all. For a society entranced by the materialism of the “Christmas season,” the universal church—the body of Christ—must break that trance by the proclamation of a coming king.
The church must not acquiesce to the world’s declaration of getting that new great toy or to their martyr complex of being so busy. We have something to proclaim that is much more real than Christmas busyness. The church must promote that redemptive reality every Sunday of Advent. If we can’t get excited for anticipation of the birth of our king, then is there really anything to get excited for?
It is no accident that the Advent season falls during the darkest month of the year (if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere, that is). December contains the least amount of light and the shortest day of the year. That darkness is so emblematic of pretty much every human on this planet.
It is through that darkness that the anticipation of a coming Messiah must be proclaimed.
However, December also has a distinction no other month can claim: it is the month wherein light returns. A few days before the day we celebrate as Christmas, the winter solstice occurs. The days start getting longer. Light returns. Darkness gets pushed away.
The world needs hope. The world needs to know that it is within this darkness that hope shines. The world must be reminded that this darkness will end.
I encourage all Christ-followers not to approach this season with contrived dread. Instead, approach this season with the thrill of anticipation and the excitement of the proclamation.
After all, for most of us, we get more excited about the anticipation of Christmas than the actual day itself.
Advent ends on December 24, Christmas Eve. It was on the night the angels punched through the darkness and proclaimed to the lonely shepherds, “Unto you a child is born.”
As I post this less than an hour later, it is dark outside. And my Christmas lights just came on.
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