Have you ever noticed how the news headlines at Christmas just do not seem to respect the season? While we are singing of Jesus bringing peace and hope to the earth, even a cursory glance at the headlines reminds us of the harsh realities of crime, poverty and disease.
In this season of Christmas with ‘peace on earth and mercy mild’ being sung, everyday children’s visions of sugar plums are washed away with the hot tears of grown up disappointment and despair.
Yet, this should not be surprising to us because Christmas has always been a season of stark contrasts. It is a tale of both light and dark. John’s Gospel speaks quite plainly to this in John 1.5: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.”
John’s Gospel contrasts light which symbolizes Christ’s hope, life and meaning with darkness which represents despair, blindness and chaos. It is a contrasting image for a season of contrasts, where bad news headlines dominate our front pages even while we sing of the hope and peace we have in Christ.
‘The light shines IN the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it’. Of course, we would prefer the light to end the darkness once and for all. We want the light to obliterate the darkness, to take all sadness and despair and just toss the whole mess into some cosmic trash can.
In fact, sometimes those bad news headlines loom so large in our reckoning that we begin to fear they WILL overcome the light. Sometimes goodness and love seem so small in comparison to the constant problems that dominate our newspapers that we begin to lose hope.
It is then we need to remember that even the faintest flicker of light is enough to change everything. Professor Laura Lewis, a Bible teacher at Austin Seminary, tells the story of a student who prepared a lesson on Isaiah 9.2, which reads “the people who walked in the darkness have seen a great light.”
When the time came for this enterprising student to lead her fellow classmates through this lesson, she took them into a basement situated a couple of stories below ground level. She sat them down and then read: “You are a people who live in a land of deep darkness.” And then she turned out the light.
Since this basement was so far underground, it was plunged into total dark. Some of the students gasped in shock with the going of the light, their senses numbed by the heavy, all pervasive dankness of the total dark. There they sat in silence for five long minutes, until she read, “Those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them a light has shined.”
With these words she lit a candle. Now, by no means did that candle extinguish the darkness, nor did it even fill the vast basement room with light, but at the same time it changed everything.
It changed them and their perspectives radically, because it changed quite literally how they saw things. With just the flicker of light, they saw enough to see themselves and each other. They saw surprised faces, puzzled faces and even a few faces streaked with tears. This tiny flame brought all their senses alive again.
For those in the deep darkness, a little light makes all the difference. It changes how we feel, how we listen, how we speak, how we engage life itself, because it changes our perspectives – how we view things, how we see ourselves and others.
A little light makes ALL the difference in the world.
Just as light came into the world through six or seven pounds of infant, so light comes into the world through even the smallest acts of love and hope done in his name.
Remember then that even the tiniest acts of faith, love and hope are light-bringing actions, and that no matter how much darkness we may be facing it cannot overcome even the smallest light, BUT even the smallest of lights forever alters the dark.
This is the Good News of Christmas which will overcome the bad news of everyday newspaper headlines.