Well, this worked out nicely – the next part of our passage is about life and light, light overcoming darkness. And here it is, the longest night of the year. We’ve experienced increasing darkness all through Advent – and not only with the length of days. And here comes the promise that light will prevail:
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
I once had a very vivid dream. I was driving a car in a strange city, my parents in the back seat. In this city, all the hospitality businesses – hotels, restaurants, bars – were in one part of town, and we were looking for a particular hotel driveway. But there were no lights. Nothing. No car lights, no street lights, no lights in windows, nothing. Pitch black. We were hurtling through the dark, looking for this driveway, with no way to see. It was very scary.
And then someone in the back said, “Have you tried the infra-red lights?” And I flicked a switch on the dashboard, and boom! All the lights sprang out. Street lights, lights from cars, lights in windows. They’d all been there, but we couldn’t see them without the infra-red lights.
It seemed to me the next morning that this had been a God dream – but I wasn’t sure what it meant, until a few years later I learned how infra-red works. I hadn’t known it when I had the dream, at least not consciously. Infra-red vision works by detecting heat; it sees where life is, and that shows up as light. Life is light. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of humankind.” I gradually realized that this dream was about seeing with the eyes of faith, seeing what is already fully here but not visible without with faith vision.
The life of God is here already, full, vibrant, but we need faith vision to see it. In Christ, we have been given that vision, to see the life that is coming, to see the life that is. As we become able to focus on this future that is already here, we can anticipate with hope, expecting blessing. We are able to believe that healing can come in the starkest of situations, conversion in the darkest of hearts.
And we come to see that what looks like complete darkness is in fact a beautiful night in a wonderful city, lit by the Light of the World.
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