Sunday, December 6, 2015

Living in Darkness, waiting for the Light

 Now those people live in darkness.
    But they will see a great light.
They live in a place that is very dark.
    But a light will shine on them.
 God, you will cause the nation to grow.
    You will make the people happy.
And they will show their happiness to you.
    It will be like the joy during harvest time.
It will be like the joy of people
    taking what they have won in war.
(Isaiah 9:2-3 International Children’s Bible)

Last night I finished putting together our children’s Christmas program for church. This is the fourth year I’ve written the program. But saying I “wrote” it is misleading, I just put together the Bible passages and the songs that fit (I get a lot of help with the songs from our organist). I don’t pull the Bible verses out of my head, I Goggle things like “verses for Christmas programs”. It’s really not so hard.

After printing out the program, I still wanted to write this blog post. It dawned on me, why reinvent the wheel? Just take the three Bible readings you already researched for the program and use them for the next three weeks leading up to Christmas.

I went to bed before getting that done.

This morning, eating breakfast while reading the news on the internet, I thought that maybe instead I should write about the crisis our world is in. Between terrorist attacks, gun control, Syrian refugees, and the whole clash over religion, society seems to be spiraling towards the End Times.

But because God is good, even though there are many out there who disagree, He gave me the Bible verse above which I pulled off the internet several weeks ago to use in our Christmas program because the program’s theme is “Jesus is the Light”, not even thinking it has any further implications than that.

The verse is prophesying the coming of Jesus on the first Christmas. But isn’t it foretelling much more? What do you think?


Lord God, Heavenly Father, be with us during these turbulent times. Give us the wisdom to make the right decisions and the strength to act on them. Amen  

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