A Light for People Who Walk in the Dark

(from Isaiah 7 and 9)

There were people who lived in the dark.

It was not the soft dark of bedtime,
when someone you love is just down the hall.
It was a long dark, a waiting dark,
the kind that makes you wonder
if morning forgot how to come.

They were afraid.
They were tired of being afraid.
And sitting there in the dark,
they ached for one thing:

Someone to come.
Someone to come, and to stay.

So God sent a promise.
He gave it to Isaiah, the man whose lips
the burning coal had made clean,
and Isaiah spoke it like a candle
lit in a far-off window,
small, and steady, and meant for them.

Listen, he said.
A young woman is going to have a baby.
A little boy.
And you will call his name Immanuel,

which means God with us.

God. With us.
Not watching from far away,
but come down close,
right into a dark and dusty world.

With us.

And the promise grew, the way a sunrise grows.
A child will be born, God said.
A son, given.
And the whole weight of the world
will rest on his small shoulders,
and he will not let it fall.

They will give him the biggest names.
Wonderful Counselor,
who will always know what to do.
Mighty God,
strong enough to carry everything.
Everlasting Father,
who will never, ever leave.
Prince of Peace,
and when he comes, the fighting stops,
and the fear stops,
and the dark stops being so dark.

His kingdom will only grow.
It will never run down.
And it will never, ever end.

God said all of this
to people sitting in the dark.
He made the promise
before they could see even a bit of it come true.

And then do you know what God did?

He waited.
And he remembered.
And he kept it.

Because that is what God is like.
He does not make a promise in the dark
and forget it in the morning.

Then one night, in a little town called Bethlehem,
a young woman had a baby boy.
And the people who walked in the dark
saw a great light.

The promise had a face now.
The promise had small hands.
You could hold him.

Immanuel.
God, with us.
Come at last, and come to stay.

The light they ached for in the dark
had a name,
and his name was Jesus.

And the morning they thought had forgotten them?

It had been coming all along.