Church Family,
This past Sunday, in our anticipation of Christmas, we spent our time in the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John. While this book does eventually get into the ground-level narrative details of Jesus’ life on earth, these first eighteen verses give us a sort of 30,00 foot view of the theology of the incarnation. John steps back and tells us what it means that Jesus became a human and why we should be amazed and overjoyed by that fact. At one point during the sermon, Pastor Bryan drew our attention to verse five and encouraged us to linger on it for a minute, to let it sink in, so I figured it was worth doing exactly that here in the blog post. Verse five tells us “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This statement is so powerful because it is irrefutable based on the very natures of light and darkness. We can’t turn on a dark switch to take the light out of a room. We don’t worry that darkness is going to spill out of a cave and overtake the daylight. Light always wins. If Jesus is the light, how could we ever fear that he might not be victorious?
This verse also does something striking with its use of tenses. Given everything we just thought about, the verse certainly could have said “and the darkness will not overcome it.” This is objectively true; there is no sensible future in which darkness overtakes light. This would also fit with the lofty nature of the surrounding passage since it would speak to eternity instead of just to a moment. But I think John very intentionally writes “and the darkness has not overcome it” to speak to the hearts of his readers. He is saying that even in this moment the light is winning. We might not always feel like this is true. We might feel like the darkness of a fallen creation is winning, that disease and natural disaster cannot be overcome. We might feel that the darkness of human corruption is winning, that the powers-that-be have seized such influence that they can ensure their own position forever. Certainly we may sometimes feel that the darkness of our own sin is winning, that despite hours of reading, prayer, and repentance, we cannot help but fall short in the same ways over and over again. Still, Christian, we can rest assured that even in this very moment, the darkness has not overcome the light. While it is absolutely true that Jesus will be victorious, it is just as true that Jesus presently is victorious, and that ought to bring us immeasurable hope and joy.
Winter Schedule
With the Christmas season in full swing, Light in the Desert’s regular schedule is looking a little irregular, so we wanted to keep you in the loop on everything going on around here. First of all, we have finished our Wednesday night activities for the year. Hopefully you’re not reading this blog post while standing outside the locked church doors. All our Wednesday night activities will resume on January 15th. Second, we will be having a short service on Christmas Eve at 4:00 p.m.Third and finally, on December 29th, our usual 9:00 Sunday Studies time will be replaced with a fellowship hour. I don’t have direct confirmation on this, but I suspect there will be various pastries and large amounts of coffee available, perhaps with other goodies as well. And if that’s not enough reason to get you out the door that Sunday morning, quality time with church family certainly ought to be.
Grace be with you,
Logan Murphy
Pastoral Intern