The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.
- Isaiah 9:2
 
Light in the darkness … that’s a powerful image for Christmas-time. 
 
The sky wraps herself in a gray mantle. The trees shake color from their branches. Even the grass loses its brightness. The days feel short and the nights last for-ev-er. This isn’t just winter. This is life.
 
We have bleak seasons. Our joyful memories, sepia-toned, peel and crack in the box on the back shelf. We move slowly, hesitant, fearful, stumbling forward with hands outstretched to prevent a collision or brace a fall. All we see is darkness.
 
Don’t berate yourself if you find yourself in the dark. God won’t leave you there. The darkness is not dark to him. Darkness will be as light to him.
 
He cracks the darkness – shattering fractures spiderwebbing through all of it. But we (locked in the dark) don’t / can’t see his work. We’re still walking, stumbling. We’re faithful despite the darkness, faith proven in the dark.
 
And then the brightness. Blinding but we see. We see with eyes wide open. Light spills through every seam, pours beneath the doors, floods every valley and spotlights every naked tree.
 
We can see where we walk. 
We can see each other.
We can see God.
 
This is what Christmas does for us. Help. Hope. Revelation.
 
What will you do if God restores sight to you? What will your life become when light has come? Who do you know who needs the light you carry in you this Christmas?