Longest Night, A Prelude to Joy Reflections on the Light

One of the things about doing the same thing for forty years is that people who are just beginning their careers look about twelve.

I am pretty much over my doctor looking like the female equivalent of Doogie Houser. I had forgotten that the pastor who cares for my Connecticut family looks only slightly older than an altar boy, until he showed up at the hospital waiting room as my aunt, cousin and I twiddled our thumbs, read, worried and paced during the long hours of my uncle’s surgery.

He quietly pulled up a chair and settled into our reminiscing about the first Easter egg hunt held at our house when all the children of my generation were between 4 and 7. It is the stuff of family legend.

The conversation meandered through the weather, current events and the price of gas. It usually came back to some story that defined the funky group of people that make up my family.

It is the kind of conversation people have about the past when they are afraid there might not be a future, and the present is a little too much to take in big doses.  This young pastor sipped his coffee and smiled, listened and gathered the stories of my family into his keeping.

When he was ready to leave, he asked us to pray together.  We huddled close in the din of the waiting room where other families were telling their stories and he prayed, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it…your light shines in this place and we thank you.”

I’m not sure what he said after that.  His words exploded with the assurance that while we were stumbling around the darkness of that moment in a place none of us wanted to be, there was a presence holding us and helping us.

His words were a gift that transformed the moment…a reminder that no matter what happened it was going to be okay, because even if we didn’t know what the future held we knew who held not only the future but also that present moment.

It was the reminder I needed that “…light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (From John 1)

This verse suggests a role for us that we might otherwise overlook.  In our waiting, in our preparation, in our Advent presence, we are witnesses to the light.

Much of this season is marked by hopes for something bigger and better, something more than what we have, or at least something different.  For some of us it is a yearning for what used to be and is no more. For others of us it is an ache for what never was.  We all share a restless search for meaning and purpose in the midst of our days.  And like them we often seek it in places that will disappoint us: gifts under the tree, impossible wishes for what will never be and more.

The promise of the season is joy, and it is always bigger than the stuff of the moment. It’s not some cheesy BS that is synonymous with happiness. My favorite Christian apologist Frederick Beuchner writes, “Happiness turns up more or less where you’d expect it to…a good marriage, a rewarding job, a pleasant vacation.  It’s a wonderful thing. The problem is that it’s pretty fickle.” Much of the disappointment of this season comes when happiness disappoints us and we are left with what is and not what we wish for.

Joy is of much stronger stuff. It is not about what is happening in the moment, but who holds the moment.

The joy we so desperately crave is not found in what we create, in what we get or even in what we give, but in what we are promised.

Life is always bigger than this present moment. Our shared human existence has meaning and possibilities beyond our present experiences.

The moment may, in fact, be a train wreck.  But the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, and will not, overcome it.