Who Turned the Lights On?

Bad weather today.
 
We’re having the first winter storm. Heavy sheets of rain drench everything, pouring off roofs, spewing out of gutters, turning yards into lakes. Wild sluices rampage down the mountainsides, drowning valley streams, issuing flash floods. In the high water streets, cars move like boats piloted by novice captains. Rogue gusts push people around, deform umbrellas, and deface clothes. Outside is one big soggy mess. Thankfully, inside it’s dry, calm, safe.
 
However, every once in a while, the lights flicker and sometimes we lose power completely for a few seconds. During the day, recovery amounts to the simple but irritating task of resetting every blinking digital clock—bed stand clock radio, TV, stovetop, microwave.
 
But night is a different story. In the few moments of utter darkness my slow processing mind goes from “Who turned off the lights” to “I think we’re having a power outage” to “Omigod, I can’t see!” Neurotic people like my husband station flashlights in every room of our house for just that reason. Non-neurotic (stupidly stubborn) people like me grope blindly in the dark trying to remember if the strategically placed flashlight was there or there—and then yell for help.
 
Few of us in this day and age experience pitch black. We have become accustomed to having light at all times of day. A flick of the switch, or even a flip of a cell phone, and we feel like God on the first day of Creation (And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Genesis 1:3)
 
Used to be that when the sun went down, people stayed in. Now the setting sun is met by the twinkling start up of city lights. Cities change persona after dark. The dirt so obvious in broad daylight blends into the shadows while high above, skyscrapers dress the skyline like women in sequined gowns. Ablaze in electrifying trim, they become titillating, tantalizing, glamorous, glittering, gaudy spectacles in the night sky. New York’s Times Square, Tokyo’s Ginza, The Bund in Shanghai and Hong Kong Harbor, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and the Queen herself, Las Vegas call out, “Look at me!” and defy the darkness.
 
But what happens when the lights go out? What if all the lights went out? What if they didn’t come back on for a very long time? And what if the thank-God-you’re-neurotic-I-love-you-because-you’re-crazy neurotic’s flashlights began to fail us?
 
Well, that’s kind of what happened in the 400 years between the end of the Old Testament prophets’ writings and the coming of Jesus Christ – an era known as “the intertestamental period.”
 
There were no electric lights to go out, but the Word of God, the voice of God through his prophets that had illuminated people’s lives, guided them, offered hope in shadowy situations, that had said there is still a way, my way, when you can’t see two feet in front of you—the sound of comfort and exhortation, promise, a future and hope—went out, went silent, dark, blank. A long, uninterrupted nothing.

For 400 years, God was silent. He sent no prophets, crazy as they appeared, who did weird things like walk around naked (Isaiah 20), eat bread baked with cow dung (Ezekiel 4), take back his promiscuous wife multiple times (Hosea), survive the belly of a whale for three days (Jonah), or build a great, big boat for two of every living creature (Noah).
 
For 400 years, the lights went out on the world. There was no new news from God, no word of encouragement, no reminder of His promise that He would someday send a Messiah to save the world from utter darkness. Nada. Those who waited lived on the fumes of faith. They clung to old prophecies, such as the last words issued in the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, where God says this:
 
"Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.” [Malachi 4:1-2]
 
And then the light broke. After 400 years of darkness, Jesus came—The Light of the World, the Messiah, Emmanuel – God with us, came with, as promised, healing in his wings! As Matthew, who wrote the first book in our New Testament say, Jesus came to fulfill the prophecy by Isaiah: the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:1-2)
 
Jesus came to be the way for all people through the ages, across all cultures, men and women, slave and free, to have a permanent connection with God He would maintain
 
Jesus came to shine a light on our lives that would, yes, point out the unsightly, blemished, broken down, damaged, scarred, mean and far from perfect parts of us that we would rather hide. And he came not to condemn but to free us from them.
 
Jesus came to restore us and restore our relationship with God.
That is what we celebrate at Christmas.
 
So I have to ask: Have you discovered that part of Christmas yet?
 
If you feel like the lights have been turned off in your life, or maybe like you could never find the switch. If you feel like you have a little light but it’s just never enough and you long for more so that you can see clearly for once. If you have been living in darkness and in the shadow of death. If the world seems silent and without meaning. If you have no hope to grasp onto and see no future. If you question what love is. If you have been groping for a flashlight and now want to yell for help…
 
May I introduce you to Jesus?
 
It’s not hard. It’s simpler than any of us can imagine. Just say:
Jesus, I want you to come into my life. I want your light to shine in my darkness. Come into the empty and deserted places of my heart that no one has been able to occupy. Let me know that I am never alone because you are here. Forgive me for the things I have done and the things I have failed to do. Show me God’s love and open the heavens for the miraculous to occur in my life. Let me experience the power of the Holy Spirit to do the things that I cannot do. I want to live in the light, Jesus. Show me how. Show me now.

May your lights be turned on perpetually from this moment on.

Posted via email from 40 Day Fast