The Light of Christ

I heard a fascinating discussion about darkness in a broadcast shortly before Christmas.

One participant raised a question that keeps coming back to me. “We should ask whether it is the dark of the tomb, or the dark of the womb?”

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year. And Christmas 2019 seemed to be a dark time for many, with political conflict and for many personally a time of illness and loss.

So it was when Jesus was born – the world in darkness pining.

Yet John could write of the Word becoming flesh . . . “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.”

In Christ, the dark is not a dead end. Not the dark of the tomb. It is the dark of the womb – the dark of a baby in the dimness of mother’s womb waiting for the light of new life!

As Jesus described childbirth, a women has pain “because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish, because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now, but I will see you again” (John 16:21-22).

So darkness does not have the last word! The light of Christ does!

-Leighton Ford, February 2020