Let There Be Hope

God is still at work amidst darkness.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

Midnight stole upon us while the sun remained high in the sky. It was a Saturday. The phone rang. I answered. And just like that, night fell. Words upon words, like soot-black spatters of darkness, rained from the phone and smothered me. It was the call that other parents get. You know, the ones of whom we say, “Oh, those poor parents. My heart breaks for them.” Only it was not other parents. Not this time. And the heart crushed and ground to fragmentary shards lay dead but stubbornly alive within my own chest.

Luke had fallen to his death. A sentence grammatically simple. A fact devastatingly horrid. On this side of the resurrection, he will remain, with every passing year, 21 years old.

He had died on a hike while studying abroad in Chile. In the weeks we waited for his body to be flown home, in the time between his funeral at home and his second funeral and interment at the United States Naval Academy, and in the months following, I arose early and walked for miles in the dark. Praying psalms. Weeping rivers of tears. Launching a million and one whys to heaven’s throne of grace.

Day by torturous day, unbeknown to me at first, the Spirit of God was doing what he has been doing since the dawn of life: accomplishing his best work in the dark. The Lord’s creation of all things began in the dark. “Let there be light,” he said, and there was light. His creation of each of us began in the darkness of the womb. “Let there be birth,” he said, and there was birth.

Within me, the voice that spoke, initially in a whisper but with gradually intensifying volume, uttered these four words: “Let there be hope.” And there was hope.

Our Father was accomplishing his work within me in the dark. He taught me, when the present is covered with the shadow of death, to borrow light from the past. There is hope because the young man whose body we buried had been united by baptism to the living body of Jesus, who had also been buried, then rose triumphant, his foot on the neck of death for us.

The Lord taught me to bank on light from the future as well, for no matter how fierce the growl of midnight grief, it whimpers in defeat when dawn begins to laugh. And the dawn of resurrection comes. It shone during the first advent of Jesus, when he vacated his borrowed tomb, and that resurrection dawn will dispel every vestige of night at his second coming.

I have learned that tears and smiles can coexist in a soul full of the hope of what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do for us. Never will I be the same, and I am grateful for that. Through wounds and tears, in darkness and grief, I have learned that “even the darkness will not be dark to you,” O Christ (Ps. 139:12), for you are the Light of the World.

Chad Bird is a scholar in residence at 1517. He is the cohost of the podcast 40 Minutes in the Old Testament and the author of several books, including Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms.

- More from Chad Bird

Church Life

Christmas in Wartime

Daniel Darling

How can Christians possibly pause for Advent in a world so dark?

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

We drove down busy streets, sirens intermittently breaking up the feigned normalcy of a city in wartime. Ukrainians worked and shopped, worshiped and worried throughout Kyiv, miles from the front but seconds from a missile strike.

We toured a children’s hospital with an entire ward reduced to a pile of rubble, the target of a Russian bomber. We visited an underground shelter where students, at a moment’s notice, could leave their desks and go study while the world burned. We spoke with Ukrainian children rescued from kidnapping and exploitation by the Russians and now cared for by an evangelical Christian ministry.

But it was the final scene in Kyiv last December that brought a steady flow of tears to my eyes. As we dragged our luggage through the train station and readied ourselves to board for an overnight trip to Krakow, we heard a Ukrainian band belting out Christmas carols. It seemed an act of defiance by these sturdy people, as if to say, We will celebrate Christmas. Not even war will erase our hope.

The festivity and joy of this season is always, every year, juxtaposed with the backdrop of brokenness. This year is no different. Economic uncertainty in the West. Civil war, again, in Sudan. A Middle East aflame.

How can Christians possibly, audaciously, pause for Advent in a world so dark? A lyric of a favorite hymn says it clearly: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.” The birth of Jesus came at a time no less troubled than our own, to a people pressed down and weary, to a world on edge. Accompanying Jesus’ birth was the jealous slaughter of young boys by the mad monarch, Herod. Violence. Poverty. Corruption.

When will this cycle ever end? Yet those who believed knew the birth of this baby boy to a peasant couple was the beginning of something new. Zechariah said as much in his prayer:

Because of our God’s merciful compassion,
the dawn from on high will visit us
to shine on those who live in darkness
and the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
(Luke 1:78–79, CSB)

As the prophet Isaiah foretold, those who have walked in darkness will now see a great light. This Light, John would later write, has come into the world and the darkness will not overcome it. It will not overcome him.

You may not be feeling the light this Christmas. Your world may seem dreary, full of grief and woe. I’ve known this feeling. I’ve walked among those who could see only darkness. Yet Advent offers us genuine hope inside our groaning. God became flesh, inhabited our world, and—by his life, death, and resurrection—defeated the darkness that envelops the world, envelops us.

It’s audacious, really, to celebrate Christmas, to sing “Joy to the World” in the midst of war. We can, though, for we know that the baby who lay in that dark cave is the King of the world. He is light, and in him is no darkness at all. A new world awaits.

Daniel Darling is an author and pastor. He is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary and author of several books, including The Characters of Christmas.

- More from Daniel Darling

Church Life

The Christmas Cloud

Dave Harvey

Christmas feels decidedly unmerry when our emotions don’t align with truth.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

Call it the “Christmas cloud”—that unwelcome shadow suspended over many in December. For the Christian, it’s hard to admit. Who wants to be the Grinch throwing cloud shade on Christ’s birthday? After all, “it’s the hap-, happiest season of all,” right? But for too many, happiness describes our songs, not our souls.

We feel emotionally exiled to the outdoors—peering through frosted windows at friends and families enjoying Christmas cheer. Inside is warmth and wonder. Outside, we’re wrapped in scarves of sadness. We wonder, God became man to save my soul—so why doesn’t that touch my happy place?

Christmas feels decidedly unmerry when our emotions don’t align with truth. No one told us life might include decking the halls while feeling dark, displaced, and shamelaced. We ask, Why does Christmas make me feel more alienated from the very things I know are good? How do I get out from under the cloud?

Start here: Christmas clouds don’t erase light.

Clouds may block the sun so we don’t see or feel its effects. But the sun’s power isn’t compromised. As a Floridian, I know this. We have two seasons: hurricane season and whatever you call the other six months. But even when storms loom, every Floridian knows the sun is still there. When entombed by ominous clouds, sunshine remains an unstoppable reality.

Same with Christmas. It’s not first a feeling; it’s a fact. “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” (John 1:4–5, ESV throughout).

The King of light invaded our darkness. He came as light-embodied and light-dispensing. “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (v. 9). Christ was simultaneously light and lighter.

Don’t reduce Christmas to how you feel. I’m not saying ignore emotions—but don’t anchor your celebration to them. What makes Christmas merry isn’t your mood. It’s that Christ’s light is true. And he gave it to you.

Remember, you didn’t receive Christ as an ever-present emotion. You didn’t become a follower of a feeling. Something far greater happened. “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Beams of gospel light pierced your clouded heart. The cloud parted, if only for a moment. You responded to the gospel. The Light won.

So let Christmas remind you: When light and darkness clash, light wins. Every time. And if this Christmas feels too cloudy, reach back to the clarity of when Christ first came to you.

Also remember: Christmas clouds remind us we’re not home yet.

No holiday romances our imagination more than Christmas. But this isn’t heaven—not even close. Maybe your cloud points to something more holy: You’re homesick.

During Christmas, we’re pinged by a distant homeland. The season becomes God’s annual reminder that we’re not home yet. A new earth is ordered and on the way. Christmas incites longings to be whole with friends and family—to be fully known, forever loved, physically whole, and eternally safe. Christmas stirs an emotional foretaste of what will soon be fully satisfied. Proceed through the season “knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence” (2 Cor. 4:14).

So don’t curse the Christmas cloud—let it direct your gaze. Christ has come. Christ is here. Christ will come again.

That’s not a feeling. That’s a fact bright enough to break through any cloud.

Dave Harvey (DMin, WTS) is the president of Great Commission Collective and serves on the board of Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). His most recent book is The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders, and he writes regularly at Revdaveharvey.com.

- More from Dave Harvey

Church Life

Hold On, Dear Pilgrim, Hold On

W. David O. Taylor

Isaiah speaks to the weary awaiting light in the darkness.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

I once lived in a neighborhood where the pecan trees rose a hundred feet high into the burning Texas sky. The two trees in the backyard and one in the front towered over our home with a kind of regal elegance and regularly bore buttery nuts in the late spring.

In 2005, they turned strange, however. All summer long, they began losing limbs, in some instances at a wild, feverish pace. Thick, scaly branches ripped away, cracking the air with a screeching sound, then plummeted noiselessly to the ground. All down my block, branches crashed on top of cars and roofs and lawns, yielding a great whine of chainsaws.

Good things that should have been strong and enduring were falling apart.

Much the same can be said about this past year: marriages broken by infidelity; families torn apart by political animosities; congregations damaged and then fractured by the abuse of authority; cities roiled by cycles of protest and counterprotest, some of them turning brutally violent; landscapes ravaged by fires.

Seeing so many things break down in the world around us can cause even the sturdiest among us to begin to lose it. We lose hope. We lose the will to care. And when left to our own devices, dark despair settles in and corrodes our senses of what’s real and good and worthwhile.

This is where the words of the prophet Isaiah speak to us across the centuries to convey a word of hope. “Hold on, dear pilgrim,” he tells us. “Hold on.” Then the Lord speaks in Isaiah 35:3–4:

Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear.”

Blind, deaf, lame, and mute—of both body and heart—will be made whole. Wastelands will blossom. The hot sands will become a cool oasis. Wrongs will be made right, and the redeemed will return home dancing with halos of everlasting joy. It will not always be dark and dreadful.

When things in our lives and the world around us keep falling apart, in ways that might seem utterly pointless or downright merciless, it’s easy to lose hope. And when we lose hope, the world can feel terribly bleak and not worth bothering about.

God knows our hearts need help in such times. He knows our hands will grow weak and our hearts fearful. He knows we’ll want to give up, even if only in small ways. So, it is to us, here and now, that he speaks a word of promise: “Gladness and joy will overtake [you], and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (v. 10).

We lost one of the pecan trees at our old Austin home, and the two that remained looked haggard and spindly. I imagine many of us feel similarly today. We feel worn down by all the things that are breaking down. But to each of us, our Lord speaks: “Be strong, and do not be afraid. I am coming. I am coming and will set all things right.”

W. David O. Taylor is associate professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of Open and Unafraid, A Body of Praise, and Prayers for the Pilgrimage. He posts about art and theology @davidtaylor_theologian on Instagram.

- More from W. David O. Taylor

Church Life

Dirty Frank

E.M. Welcher

Sometimes God sends prophets. God sent me a dog.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

When I was in my 20s, my brother gave me his dog.

Professor Frank. Eighty-five pounds of black-and-white stray mutt. Red collar.

His tail, a cedar of Lebanon, thumped against walls, shins, the very world itself, and your soul. But his heart weighed 99 pounds. His love reverberated through the plywood of the mobile home I rented, thump, thump, thump, like the heart of God pulsing through redemptive history.

We would cruise around the sacred hills and hollows in my black Ford F-250. Then we picked out a house. Frank slept in the mudroom. His tail gave a pulse to our home.

I met a girl. Frank thought she was sure neato keen. We got married. She died.

A man has a way of turning in on himself. All the hues of the day simmer down to nothing much worth watching, so you stare at the wall a bit. Shadows lengthen, but you don’t bother turning the light on. The garbage has more bottles in it than you care to admit, and perhaps you catch a glimpse of yourself in your truck window and realize the bags beneath your eyes reveal that the rhetoric of faith seldom pans out into gold. Maybe you turn on a show to ignore. I merely sat and watched reruns in my head, with no love left to give.

The pulse of the house went quiet. Behemoth’s tail failed to wag in the mudroom. I went to see the mutt, and he barely bothered to look up. The dog missed her too. He mourned with a broken heart. Nothing’s sadder than a brokenhearted dog.

I lay prostrate on the unswept mudroom floor, like I was at one of those churches where you let everybody know you’re about to get serious with the praying. I lay down next to my mutt friend, petted him for a while, and finally said, “I miss her too, boy.”

Like a dead man shocked back to the land of the living, I heard the house’s pulse resume, thump, thump, thump, as Frank’s tail returned to life.

Sometimes all we need to start inching away from the darkness is an acknowledgment of the wreckage. “Oh, I see there’s parts of you all over the highway, and your heart is nowhere to be found.” The wreckage has gone beyond the repair of human hands, but the cognizance goes a long way.

I suppose that’s why the prophet Isaiah let us all know that the Christ would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (53:3, ESV).

The Lord Jesus is a wild man. He sent prophet after prophet to Jerusalem—even showed up himself to gather his people as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings. But they would not have it (Matt. 23:37).

He sent me a dog.

E.M. Welcher is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Vermillion, South Dakota. He is the author of Advent: A Thread in the Night, Nightscapes: Poems from the Depths, and Resplendent Bride: Essays on Love and Loss. Find him on Substack.

- More from E.M. Welcher

Church Life

Living in the Dark Space

Heather Thompson Day

We can’t always see the light when we are in the dark. But the light can always see us.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

I was watching my son come out of the water at the beach. He was laughing until he wasn’t. He couldn’t see me. I watched him scan the sand for my chair.

“Mom!” he shouted while starting to panic. He thought he was lost because he couldn’t see me. But he wasn’t lost at all. He had stopped watching me, but I never stopped watching him.

I have gone through dark spaces in my life. Gaps where I couldn’t see how the dots would connect where I was with where I hoped to be going. I have shouted at the ceiling. I have prayed into the darkness. I have cried out to a God that I couldn’t see anymore. These gaps are what I call “dark spaces.” They’re the spaces between what we see and what we can’t. Between faith and fear. Uncertainty and urgency. Hope and hallucinations.

Dark spaces are inevitable. The word darkness is used around 150 times in the Bible. On earth there will be darkness. But there will also be light. Much of life is spent navigating the gap in between. It’s a theme of Scripture—the ongoing battle between darkness and light. None of us will escape it.

I want my obedience to God to come with a detailed prophecy of how these stars align. I want a visible string. Thread the needle and show me the yarn. But so rarely does what I want match what I have experienced. And we don’t talk about the dark spaces enough.

The dark space between “I surrender all” and “once I see how it turns out.” Between singleness and the altar. Between the womb and the baby. Between the diagnosis and the healing. Between the last two weeks’ pay and the new-hire form. Between the moving and the landing.

The hardest part of faith is standing ten toes deep in the gaps of these dark spaces. It feels like quicksand, like your knees will disappear while praying on them. Yet Scripture is filled with dark spaces. And very few of our heroes managed them well. Job nearly died in his descent into the dark space. Sarah laughed in hers. Hannah wept in the bitterness of it. And Jonah ran from his.

Jesus was born to secure the gap between Eden and our eternity in heaven. There will be no more waiting then. No more quicksand. No more “Where is God?” or “I can’t see you.” God came to earth to stand ten toes deep with us in the dark spaces.

“I thought I’d see you by now,” I cried out to God in my bedroom one evening. And that’s when I remembered the beach. My son thought he had been lost. But he wasn’t lost at all. He had stopped watching me, but I never stopped watching him.

So it is with God every time we step into the darkness. There is a Light that sees you, even when you can’t see it.

Heather Thompson Day is the author of What If I’m Wrong? and host of the What If I’m Wrong? podcast.

- More from Heather Thompson Day

Church Life

From Limping to Leaping

Jared C. Wilson

A story of cancer, calves, Christmas, and the coming of Christ.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

Look, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and everyone who commits wickedness will become stubble. The coming day will consume them,’ says the Lord of Armies, ‘not leaving them root or branches. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall’” (Mal. 4:1–2, CSB).

“Jared, have you ever seen calves jumping?”

“No, I don’t think I have,” I replied.

It was a bitterly cold, late November day in Vermont, and I sat at the bedside of my friend Natalie, who was bundled up under layers of blankets. Natalie was dying of pancreatic cancer. Much earlier in the year, the doctors had given her a matter of weeks to live, but she’d outlived their predictions. Feeble and frail, she was now spending her final days in the home of her best friends, where they’d set up hospice in a basement apartment. I was Natalie’s pastor and had visited her each week, spending substantial time praying and reading Scripture with her and listening to her reflect on life, death, and everything in between. Christmas was coming, and barring a miracle, it would be her last.

Natalie had unusual requests for Scripture readings. She would become preoccupied with particular passages in the Bible, wanting me to read them to her every time I visited, for weeks on end. We’d read John 10 and Revelation 1–3 over and over again. Now we were multiple days into Malachi chapter 4. And no, I’d never seen calves jumping.

When we’d been neck-deep in John 10, Natalie had described the behavior of sheep who recognize their shepherd’s voice. Now she was telling me that when calves are figuring out what their bodies do, they bounce across the pasture in ways you wouldn’t expect.

I said, “I see.” But I really didn’t. I was having a hard time picturing it, perhaps because I didn’t have the capacity at the time to visualize such an image of joy. My friend was dying. And she wasn’t the first. We’d seen so much death in our little country church. I’d lost numerous friends to cancer—young parents, people I’d baptized, people I cared about deeply. Natalie was an older woman but had otherwise been very healthy. She was definitely going “before her time.” And as it seemed I’d spent the last three years of ministry largely in hospitals, at bedsides, and in funeral parlors, I was worn out. I didn’t feel like leaping. But Natalie did.

As painful as life had become for her, she just kept talking about seeing Jesus. Everyone else was preparing for Christmas, when Jesus came to us. She was preparing for heaven and going to him. We talked about the glory of that moment. We talked about the glories of the new earth to come, when these bodies that we can’t keep from winding down finally give way to bodies that won’t decay and will live forever. By God’s grace, it wasn’t just those blankets keeping Natalie warm; it was her hope in Malachi 4:2’s “sun of righteousness.” Her healing was coming.

Christmas came. My family and I traveled back home to Texas, but we returned to Vermont the week after. I hadn’t seen Natalie in a couple of weeks, so after settling in, I drove over to the basement apartment to visit her. It was January 1. I didn’t know—no one had told me—but Natalie had died that morning. I arrived just as her husband and a few others were navigating bringing the pine box she requested as her casket down the staircase. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Her memorial service was held in the spring. As I sat at the big picture window in our rural home, trying to figure out my funeral sermon, I glanced out at the hillside across the street. And there to my surprise and delight came a calf, bounding exuberantly across the rocky hill. I couldn’t believe it! It was a hilarious, adorable, joyful sight. Now I knew what Natalie knew.

And one day I will know what Natalie knows—that as dark as our Christmases may be, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. The first time, Christ came to die. But he rose from his grave. He will come to us again. The lame hearts of those who trust in him will leap in their chests. And all will be well.

Jared C. Wilson is pastor for preaching at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri, and assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. He is the author of over 20 books, including Friendship with the Friend of Sinners and Lest We Drift.

- More from Jared C. Wilson

Church Life

Held Together by a Cornerstone

J.A. Medders

The validity of Christianity is not based on our experiences; it’s based on him and his Word.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

Rubble was everywhere. Over a decade of life in a local church was lost in a conflict. Deep roots severed. Old friendships went up in flames. The explosion sent shock waves through home after home. Shrapnel left me with a limp. And that’s not the worst of it.

Anxiety and depression took the spare bedroom. And they were terrible guests—awful in every way you can imagine. They were annoying when I needed peace, quiet, and rest. They were crippling when I wanted to do something—anything. They started making themselves at home, spilling out of the guest room and redecorating the house according to their style and vibe. It’s darker than you realize. Funhouse mirrors are a favorite accent. They paint the walls a dark shade of contorted reality. And while they don’t know plumbing or electrical, it doesn’t stop them from tinkering. Thankfully, they couldn’t harm the foundation of the house.

The foundation stands.

People see my nearly smooth scars now and ask, “Why didn’t you deconstruct? What kept you from leaving Christianity? And why, after everything you’ve been through, do you still serve the church?” Serious questions deserve sincere consideration.

The answer is as clear and serious as the noonday sun: because Jesus is real.

The incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, is our foundation. Christmas is no myth. It’s not a cute story. The validity of Christianity is not based on our experiences; it’s based on him and his Word.

The eternal Son of God really did come to earth from another realm to save us. He was actually placed in Mary’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit to be our redeemer. Fully God and fully man, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He came to die for our sins (Gal. 3:13), to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and to rise for our right standing before God (Rom. 4:25). And he really is building his church with himself as the foundation (Eph. 2:20). It’s all true. I must follow him.

The foundation—the cornerstone—is dependable. You can trust him. Isaiah tells us that this is “a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will be unshakable” (28:16, CSB). Jesus is acquainted with our griefs (53:3). He knows heartache and suffering more than anyone. The stone went through a stress test, and he passed.

When your house is built on Christ and his Word, you are unshakable (Matt. 7:24–25). The storms will come. You will sway in the wind, and you will be beaten by the rain. A new roof, walls, and flooring may be needed—but the foundation holds. You are held fast in him. As the old hymn tells us, “When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.” Christmas is the story of the delivery and installation of your cornerstone, your hope and stay.

As I sat in the rubble, new friends helped me realize where I was sitting. Christ was always holding me up. Rest and rejoice in him, your firm foundation.

J.A. Medders (PhD) is the director of theology and content for Send Network and the general editor for New Churches. He also writes regularly at SpiritualTheology.net and hosts the Home Row podcast for writers.

- More from J.A. Medders

Church Life

These Dark Days

Jeremy Writebol

Left to our own ruminations, it is hard to see Jesus’ light.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

The darkness haunts me. During the successive weeks of Advent, I want the mood to lift, the light to shine, and the joy to radiate. Yet the illuminated tree, songs of good tidings and cheer, sweet cookies, and all the trimmings of “the most wonderful time of the year” can’t overcome the foreboding darkness that looms just on the other side of December 25.

As I meander further into my middle-aged years, the fear of greater hardship and affliction grows. December 25 gives way not to bliss and joy but to the literal darkness of January. Short daylight hours, bone-chilling cold, and the slog of a new year of work bring me into a depressive state. Another page of the calendar turns, and my concerns multiply. Will this be the year everything goes so poorly that I’m ruined? Will the world break apart in an all-out war? Will I be so short-sighted and uncaring that I make an irredeemable mess? Is this the year the other shoe drops and grief shrouds my eyes from any joy?

Left to my own ruminations, the darkness wins. Every time. My perspective is too narrow and jaded to gain a glimpse over the horizon. The darkness is too pervasive to think a dawning light could drive the shadows away. Hope is for those who are already winners.

That is, of course, if you ignore God’s promise. The promise.

The promise isn’t for the winners. It’s not for the whole and healthy or the rich and powerful. The promise is for those who live in the land of deep darkness. “On them has light shone” (Isa. 9:2, ESV, emphasis mine). Embracing that promise takes a mountain, or only a mustard seed, of humility. I live in that dark land. I am both a creation and a creator of it. Yet if I admit that the darkness dwells within me, I am poised to be on the receiving end of the promise.

The light has shone. Jesus confronts our present darkness with his piercing light: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). He comforts fearful and cowering dwellers of the darkness, saying, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me” (14:1). He delivers us from the dominion of darkness, bringing us into his kingdom through the shedding of his own blood (Col. 1:13).

The light will shine. The present darkness does not stand a chance with the coming Second Advent. Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory” (Heb. 1:3). When he comes again, he will put all things to rights. His light of grace and justice will fully illuminate even the secret things. It’s by his glorious light that the nations will walk. Darkness will not overcome, “for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5).

Yes, darkness is present. The darkness may get deeper still. But the promise is dawning. Post tenebras lux. “After darkness, light.”

Jeremy Writebol is the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, Michigan, and the executive director of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He is the author of several books including Make It Your Ambition, the award-winning Pastor, Jesus Is Enough, and everPresent: How the Gospel Relocates Us in the Present.

- More from Jeremy Writebol

Church Life

So Shall It Be

Jonah Sage

Our waiting is never in vain.

Illustration by Jill DeHaan

When the ultrasound tech said, “Sit tight. The doctor will be in shortly,” she had enough “uhoh” in her voice to tell us something wasn’t right. Our normal ob-gyn was away (of course), so a stranger sat before us holding pictures of my daughter’s brain. After pointing out six “cloudy spots” on the scan, he explained two scenarios. In the first, these cysts would result in the death of our daughter sometime before her first birthday. In the second, she would be fine. “She’s fine or she isn’t,” he said. The only test available endangered her life, so the doctor asked us how to proceed. I stared at this man’s degrees on the wall, wondering how this could be our decision to make. We chose life and the ambiguity of anxious waiting.

Normal life continued. Fall transitioned into Advent. I watched my full-term wife show my infant son how to arrange our Dickens’ Village houses just right. We decorated the tree. We wrapped a baby doll for him to open on Christmas morning, hoping it would teach him to be gentle with his sister who may or may not come home. The waiting—that awful mix of hope and horror—carried us into the new year. The regular rhythms of ministry ticked by like the heart monitors of congregants I visited at the hospital. I rehearsed the statistics provided by the doctors. She’s fine. It’s fine. We waited.

Advent turned to Christmas and then Epiphany. We feasted with our church family. We prepared for Lent. We faced the whiplash of seemingly contradictory emotions embedded in the church calendar.

The night before Ash Wednesday, a once-in-a-decade blizzard descended on Louisville. We gathered the next day, with snow burying the world around us, to remember we were dying. I wondered if my daughter was still living.

On February 18, 2015, at roughly 6:40 a.m., my phone began vibrating during my homily. I read the message: “She’s coming.” We barreled through the snow to the hospital. Tears exploded when the doctor, playing a perfect Rafiki, lifted my daughter into the air.

“Is she okay?” I choked out. She was beautiful. She was healthy. She was perfect. In the twinkling of an eye, terror transformed into joy.

Our waiting taught us something of how to wait and of what is awaiting us when the waiting is over. Ours is no longer an ambiguous waiting. It may at times be painful and persistent, but it is neither vain nor uncertain. We know that when we see Jesus, we will be made like him. No one whose hope is in the Lord is ever put to shame, so we face our waiting, complicated and unpleasant as it may be. We hold our contradictory emotions. We rest in the goodness of him who keeps all his promises. He promised a child would be born unto us, and so he was. That child promised that new life would be born in each of us, and so shall it be.

Jonah Sage serves as one of the pastors of Sojourn Church in New Albany, Indiana. He completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and received his master of divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2013.

- More from Jonah Sage

Give Today

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related