Advent Reading for December 17: Isaiah 9:1-7 & Matthew 4:12-16
Reflection: The People of Darkness, the God of Light
If you walk down a typical neighborhood street tonight, you’ll see artificial lights everywhere: streetlights, porch lights, headlights, solar lights, floodlights...and, of course, Christmas lights rambling up trees and railings like jungle vines.
Thanks to Thomas Edison, making and possessing artificial light is easy and cheap. We can be careless with it, play with it.
But have you ever been in complete darkness? I once toured Mammoth Cave with my family, and our guide led us to a cavern and then turned off all the lights. We were so deep underground, not an atom of light penetrated: we were in context-erasing, vision-flattening, smothering blackness.
I wonder if the immediacy and ubiquity of light everywhere we are causes us to miss the true impact of the imagery of light and dark in Isaiah 9:1-7. The language of these verses creates a stark spiritual contrast; there are no shades or half-lights. There is “thick”, deep darkness - and then there is “great light” (Isa. 8:22, 9:2).
Immediately before this passage, the end of chapter 8 describes a people without truth, who “have no light of dawn” (Isa. 8:20). They look heavenward with curses; looking to the earth, they see only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish” (Isa. 8:22).
Then comes the wonderful word “but” in Isaiah 9:1. It separates the former time of hungry wandering in chapter 8 from the latter time of revelation.
But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish....A light has dawned.Isaiah 9:1-2
Jesus Christ is the “great light” of Isaiah 9. The passage in Matthew specifically links him to this prophecy.
The hope and truth revealed in Jesus Christ dazzles. It brings relief, growth, prosperity, peace. We have the gift of living in the future time Isaiah looks toward when he pictures scenes of harvest joy and battle victory in these verses. Even in our trials, we have Jesus, the dawn – the true, elemental source of light – and we treasure his promises in a fallen world.
We must not let the unparalleled ease of access to the truth cause us to take it for granted. We’re accustomed to worshiping, speaking, praying, preaching, freely. We have digital Bibles, pocket Bibles, audio Bibles, study Bibles. It’s always there. And sometimes we forget how precious that is: it’s always there for us.
Christ’s never-fading presence as our “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” illuminates our steps (Isa. 9:6). This advent season, thousands of years after an unknown scribe scratched Isaiah’s words onto a parchment scroll, we live in the riches of this fulfilled prophecy. We are the people who in 9:3 rejoice before our Lord for what he has done.
In the beginning God said, “Let there be light.” Then he spoke these words into the world again – in the form of a baby: “For to us a child is born” (Isa. 9:6).
And even in times of darkness, through this child, he continues to create light for his people.
Meredith Geldmeier
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