December 6

John 1:⁹ The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Dear Jesus, I have known darkness in my life, both standing in the midst of it and living in the depths of it. Please deliver me from the darkness, both within and without, that I might know the reality of your Light anew this Advent season. Amen.

There was an event in life in which I experienced the reality of complete and utter darkness. I was going through a training experience for the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO), the campus ministry organization I worked for in the 80’s. Part of our training included a wilderness experience, which consisted of camping and caving and rock climbing and hiking in the mountains of West Virginia (WV). The goal was to create stress for new staff members, in order to bring out the worst in us, so that we might see what we need to see about ourselves in order that we might grow. Our guide took us back deep into a cave, so deep we would never have been able to find our way out had he suffered a heart attack or succumb to a bat attack. We were lost deep inside the mountains of WV if not for his presence with us. He then took our lights, and asked us to link to one another and search for him in the dark. Slowly, hand in hand or arm in arm, we made our way through a Cave in complete and utter darkness. I mean, absolutely no light!! You could not see any evidence of a hand in front of your face. I had never seen, though seeing was impossible, such utter and complete darkness. It was both scary and eerie.

As we wondered through the darkness linked as if our lives depending upon the bond, we came to a dead end. We could not move forward, and were not sure moving backwards was a good idea. So we froze. But as you might expect in a cave frozen in darkness and fear, our mouths did not freeze. People were shouting over top of one another, go this way or that, do this thing or that, just sit here and wait for our guide, and others just began to cry. I was in the rear of the line, and two of us could hear the voice of our guide calling out in the darkness. Just the sound of his voice was light for the two of us, and we began to laugh, the kind of nervous laughter that you hear when people have been rescued from fear at the brink of disaster. As you may have guessed, this angered some of the others in our group. I sensed many losing their faith, but still I could not stop laughing.

At last Jeff and I were able to stop laughing long enough to inform the rest of the group of our discovery, and he turned on a flashlight to expose his hiding place behind us in a spacious cove at shoulder level just behind our path in the cave. He invited us to join him, where we circled around facing one another. You see, in this cave, you use your hands to see when there is no light. Your feel yourself into the future without certainty of what you are touching or any clue as to where you are going. Without light, wandering in the dark without a sense of security or direction, consumed by a desire to stay connected to the person on either side of us in the name of survival. Darkness breeds fear, despair, and a sense of hopelessness, which is an accurate theological description of a world without Christ.

Then a light flickers, and even if it is the tiniest of lights, darkness flees. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. It is not a question of who wins or which is more powerful, where there is light, darkness is removed. Our guide explained to us that the purpose of light is to chase darkness, to expose fear and to establish purpose and direction. An hour or so later we would emerge from this potential dark tomb, following the light in the hand of our guide. But what if the guide is the Light? What if we emerge from the darkness having attached ourselves to the Guide because this Guide had become the only Light in a dark world? What if we had been given eyes to see and ears to hear the Light of the World who had come into the cave we live in so that we might be rescued from our darkness, our fear, and our hopeless wanderings?

Duh!! Advent is about Light. Not the flash lights we carry into a cave, or the lights we string along our Christmas trees, or even the sun that carries us through our days. But the Light, the “True Light that gives light to everyone coming into the world”. Advent chases darkness. Advent destroys fear. Advent highlights purpose and direction. So as John points us toward the Light, he is reminding us that where Jesus is, darkness is not; where Jesus walks, the way is illuminated; and where Jesus lives, Light carries us from the cave we have created for ourselves into the Light God gifts to us all – Jesus, the Light of the World.