True confession: I’m afraid of the dark. My overactive imagination invents all kinds of hairy, vicious, stinging phantoms ready to attack me in the night. Perhaps that stems from my childhood when to be asked to retrieve an item from the dryer in our unfinished basement meant tiptoeing into a labyrinth of darkness, a place where no daylight ever shined. The only switched light source came from a dim stairway bulb, and the laundry area was waaay back in a corner. Experience taught me how to navigate this dungeon: Pray, run, hop to grab the first pull chain - LIGHT! Breathe… pray, run, run, run past my brother’s darkroom, lunge, and hop to grab the second pull chain. Phew! Retrieve the item and reverse the process, which was never half as bad leaving the darkness behind while walking into light.
Zechariah knew something about the transformative power of light. On the 8th day of his son John’s life, he regained his speech and burst into a prophetic song, a mash-up of prophecies from Isaiah, Malachi, Psalms and Proverbs.
“...And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:76-79
What a picture of God’s heart! It is by God’s tender mercy that He sends His Light into the world, so that those living in darkness no longer need to fear. Ever since the Babylonian exile, the people of Judah had been waiting for God’s presence to return to Jerusalem. Though back in their homeland, they were still in darkness. Zechariah sees the coming of Messiah as an answer to the years of longing for God’s presence among them again. If those who knew God were in the dark, how much more so were the nations who surrounded them living in darkness, “without hope and without God in the world”? (Eph.2:12)
Enter: Jesus, the Son, the radiance of God’s glory (Heb.1:3), who illuminates the world with the knowledge of God and His ways, leading us to repentance and offering forgiveness. We don’t need to fear the night, or dark scary basements. The Living Word is a lamp to our stumbling feet that guides us into paths of peace. Real wholeness andshalom. We just need to turn on the Light. Phew!