Where Is Joy When the Darkness Presses In?

Joy. Raucous Joy. Quiet Joy. Weeping Joy. Deep Joy.

This past Sunday was the third in Advent, the day when the scripture readings speak of Joy. Zephaniah exhorts: “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” (Zeph 3:14) Isaiah proclaims: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” (Is 12:3, 6)  Paul urges: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” (Phil 4:4)

“Joy, right!” The world scoffs in scorn, “Look around you, foolish Christians, don’t you see there is no reason for joy--children and teachers shot down; mothers and fathers weeping. And while they sob, our politicians point fingers at each other, accusing the other of recalcitrance, of stubbornness, of willfully abandoning care for the people of our nation. And you say, ‘Rejoice!’ Bah! What reason do we have for joy?”

I am no fool. I am not blind. I see and I hear what is going on around me. I too feel how the darkness presses in. I know the darkness a bit too intimately. I am still stumbling around in my life trying to walk as one where there were two. I ache for my boys as they encounter their own grief and pain. Sometimes we look around us and wonder where is there hope, how can there be a future.

In the midst of this pressing darkness, a light breaks in, flaring up as when Megan and Maclain lit the third candle, holding steady, refusing to be extinguished. The light of the candle can be blown out, but that which it represents cannot. The light of God is not subject to the vicissitudes of our lives. Sometimes our eyes are closed; sometimes our vision is blurred and we find it hard to see the light. God’s light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.

Bullets cannot wipe it out. Fiscal cliffs cannot end it. Death cannot destroy it. And thus in the midst of the darkness, I cling to the light; I cling to the deep joy and pray that I will allow it to grow within me.

[Recommended reading: “God can’t be kept out” by Rachel Held Evans.]

John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.