Light in the Darkness

They say that the silence of God lasted 400 years; that the prophet Malachi ended the prophetic period where God’s voice was alive and active with his final words and then the darkness and the silence set in. Like the falling of a curtain at the end of a play; these December weeks of Advent remind us that before there was a baby in the manger, there was a world trapped in the pitch of silence. I have always imagined this intertestamental period as a frozen in time kind of scene. The curtain falls and all the people hold their places as the light dissipates. And then they don’t move. They stand perfectly still until the light comes back and their lives begin again. In my mind, the angels sing, and the shepherds rejoice on the just the next page; so the weary world snaps back to life bathed in heaven’s glory almost immediately.

But that’s not exactly how it worked.

You see, life still carried on. For 400 years. People went to work, made dinner, washed the dishes, spoke with their neighbors, cared for babies, lit the candles, set the table, wondered about the weather and harvested the crops. But it was dark. And it was silent. They had not a word from the Lord, yet life pressed on and soon years of darkness drowned out hope that any word would ever come. They just learned how to walk in the darkness.

And this week, early in the afternoon of the fourth Sunday of Advent, as my sisters and our families stood in the Remembrance Garden at our childhood church for the second time in only four months and laid our mother to rest next to our father, I felt again the stranglehold that years of darkness can have on a soul.

The grey clouds hung low as we shivered in the December wind and quietly honored her life with our presence, our words and our prayers. She would not have wanted a crowd or much ado at all about this ending. But we needed to mark it, and of course, I needed to say some words. She would probably insist that I not post these words here just under the entry I wrote about my dad. But as I find my way through this unearthing darkness that seems to have settled on my shoulders, I am learning that words are necessary guides. I wonder if that’s how the people who lived between the years of Malachi and Matthew did it. Did they cling tightly to the words?

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light” Isaiah had written. Maybe they just kept reading those words and trusting that even when they couldn’t hear him, the Lord their God had promised that he would never leave them or forsake them. And on they walked. Below is the text of what I shared at our mother’s service. Maybe Mom would be ok with a few words here if it helps usher in the light a bit.

If Mom were here today, she would tell us all to quit talking about her and get on with our day. She would say that she was sure we had something better to do than stand around making a big deal about her. When I asked Rev. Boggess what he thought we should do about today, he said that he was certain Mom would say, “Honey, y’all do whatever is easiest for everybody.” He even had her accent down perfectly. He was right; she wouldn’t want a big deal made. But she’d also tell me, “Well if you are going to talk – start the way your plan to finish and don’t make everyone cry.”

Ok – Mom, I’ll try.

So, Mom had a lot of sayings – things we grew up hearing her repeat – some of which I might have been convinced were in the Bible. She said them with such certainty. She was a stickler for good behavior and should one of us ever step out of line, all she had to do was raise her eyebrow and it would terrify us enough to knock off whatever silliness we were engaging in. “Pretty is as pretty does” was her constant mantra as we roamed the halls of this church in our beautiful dresses and white shoes. We were constantly told how lovely we looked. But, she was not going to have a bunch of girls who looked good and couldn’t behave. We learned that lesson quickly.

As we grew up and found ourselves in complicated life situations, she would remind all three of us that the key to success was often to work hard where you are or to “grow where you are planted” she would say. I think that her ability to do that is what made her the strongest person I have ever known. She endured a lot in her life.

Miss Donna never met a challenge she couldn’t overcome – from running the ladies nightgown department at Macy’s (oh, the stories she could tell about this job!), to having three babies in diapers at the same time, to three rambunctious toddlers, and then three headstrong teenagers. She figured out how to get math homework done, school projects typed, the PTA budget balanced and fried chicken on the table for dinner all at the same time. When we were teenagers, she ran a Mailboxes Etc. store for several years enduring the Christmas rush and making sure that we too knew how to wrap and pack crystal goblets that needed to arrive in Indonesia in one piece. She worked hard and passed the Board of Education typing test so she could go back to work as a secretary at our high school and keep an eye on our wild little sister (kidding, Julie!) and help put us through school. She fought cancer five times, cared for Dad through years of sickness and rehabbed from two major falls – she never stopped fighting.

And so, it is her strength that she passes on to us. Her strength that she would insist to the point of raising her eyebrow at us that we demonstrate even in the face of her passing. She didn’t just speak words over us – she lived them and expected us to do the same. This is a portion of a liturgy from a book called “Every Moment Holy” by Doulas McKelvey that I think mom would be ok having spoken over all of us as we gather here.

“For it is not you that will do any great thing for God, but God laboring in you and through you who will accomplish his own good purposes according to the workings of his sovereign love. Be liberated now from the burden of believing that everything depends on you. Be invested instead, child in simple obedience and in long faithfulness to God’s call, shepherding daily those gifts and tasks and relationships he has entrusted to you, regardless of outcomes or appearances. Be content in the station he has appointed you to in this season and yet be ever ready to move. Tend well the things that are before you however small they may seem, and he will lead you in time to other good works he has appointed for you. Seek not your own glory, be humble and work in the strength he has given you certain that your reward is already secure.” 

 We – all of us here – are the legacy she leaves behind. We carry with us the strength that she poured into us, and she would want us to not only move forward in that strength, but for heaven’s sake – she would say, put a smile on your face and walk with your head held high. Yes, Mom, we know, it really is true, pretty is as pretty does. We think you did pretty darn good. Now, rest easy and hug dad from us – we’ll take it from here.

As we choked back our tears and fought to understand why life can be so complicated and difficult, her pastor reminded us of something I often forget. He said that love isn’t just a warm and fuzzy sentimental feeling that we drape over hard things. Love is a decision that holds steadfast and true even in the middle of dark nights and broken places. We make a decision to love and then we live out that decision when we persist through suffering; when we refuse to take the easy road in difficult times. That’s when love becomes real. And in the end, love is the only thing that remains.

Just hours after laying my mother to rest, I stood at the communion table in my church for an Advent service. I didn’t have to be there. I certainly could have taken a pass on leading a service after such a hard day. But something in my soul had fought against sitting it out. I blinked back tears and took the bread in my hands and broke it, the words of Jesus right on my lips. “This is my body broken for you, Take and Eat”. And it was God’s real enduring love for me that reflected back in the people gathered there as we ate and drank and remembered that this is indeed what love looks like. Our Creator’s body broken for us. I have never felt him as close; the tangible feeling of light pushing hard against the darkness.

And this, my friends, is how Christmas comes. It navigates through the darkest night to the most broken people and reminds us, “Do not be afraid”. Seasons of darkness can last a good while; they don’t often lift with just the turn of a page. We find ways to keep moving because life doesn’t slow down for hard things. But here’s what a day that held a cold December graveside service and the gift of broken bread served in the church I love just as nighttime settled around the edges reminded me …

We are never alone. Even when we can’t see.

Jesus comes not just to be a baby sweetly lying in a manger, but to be a Savior, a warrior obliterating the darkness. He does not shrink from the hard places of this life. He walks right into them. He comes to break himself to save us. And to turn on the light.

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

So, whether your Christmas is joyfully full of all the jingle and tinsel it can hold or whether it’s quiet and different in way you never imagined. May you begin to see through it all and be reminded of the kindness of our God. His love comes to get us, and his hope lights up all the darkness no matter where we find ourselves this Christmas. He is still Emmanuel, God with us. Merry Christmas.

“Let the ruins of Jerusalem break into joyful song, for the Lord has comforted his people. He has indeed redeemed Jerusalem” (Isaiah 52:9)