Lonely Exile: A Daily Advent Devotional

Part One: Planting Seeds for a New World

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” - Anne Lamott

Read: John 1:1-9

‘Tis the season. At least it is where I live. The trees are bare. The air is crisp. Creation is fully within the autumn and winter of decay. Yet, at the same time, my friends who garden are buzzing with anticipation because it’s also the time of year when seed catalogues begin to arrive. When the ground has grown hard and frozen, my gardener friends are planning for spring, when life will once again push against and break through the frozen ground. It’s really counterintuitive: When darkness and death seem to hold their grip most tightly on creation, gardeners and farmers begin planning for the spring that they trust will come.

The Christian Calendar does a similar thing. We don’t know when the historical Jesus was actually born. Before Matthew’s Gospel, written in the 80s or some fifty plus years after the events of Jesus’s life, there seems to have been little interest or imagination around the details of his birth. Paul and Mark, the earliest layers of the written tradition we have, show no knowledge of or interest in the story of Jesus’s birth. By the fourth century Christians decided to celebrate his birth around the time of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. When the darkness is the deepest, Christians chose to celebrate the hope of the coming light.

Advent is a season that defiantly insists, despite how dominant the darkness may appear, that the light is on the way. That’s exactly how the writer of the Gospel of John described the meaning of Jesus’s arrival for his community. He didn’t begin with a birth story, but the metaphor of light emerging into the world.

…in him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
(John 1:4-5, 9 NRSVue)

For John, in the midst of the darkness—the oppression of empire, human violence, and injustice—God’s light could not be extinguished. Jesus came into the world, not to be the only light, but to awaken the light in others, in us. We, Jesus said, are also the light of the world. Our invitation, especially in times of darkness, violence, fear, and chaos, is to dedicate ourselves to embodying the light of hope, peace, joy, and love.

Advent is a time to recommit ourselves to this work. May we be people of hope, the kind of people that begin planning our gardens in the dead of winter, planting seeds for a new world, trusting that spring will spring eventually. May we be a people that carry the light, defying and resisting the darkness, and bringing illumination and warmth to the world.

Question for Reflection:

How or where do you see the hope of light right now?