12/19/2025
It’s hard to believe, Christmas is less than a week away now.
How’s your Advent going? Are you ready for Christmas?
This morning I was struck by the fact that this coming weekend will be the darkest weekend of the year, just days before we celebrate the coming of the One who brings light. Honestly, I feel that darkness this year. It seems that the further I have journeyed through Advent, the darker things have become. Each evening at dinner, as I light our Advent wreath, I find myself praying, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
But isn’t this exactly why He came?
To bring light.
To bring hope.
To bring shalom - not just peace as we loosely translate it, but wholeness, healing, restoration, and flourishing.
I don’t know about you, but I need that. The world around me is broken. I am broken, and I need someone to come and light the way forward. Emmanuel. God with us.
That’s the promise of Christmas: that because of His great love for us, God becomes flesh and enters the darkness. He walks with us, in the midst of our brokenness and ugliness of our failings, and lights the way back to Himself.
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” (John 1:4,5,9,10)
This Christmas, may you experience God’s presence with you in whatever you’re walking through, and may He gently show you the way back to Himself.
