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There is darkness in our world this Christmas.

The news is currently full of war in Syria, a persecuted church in China, scandal at home.

There is, to be awkwardly transparent, darkness in my own self this Christmas.

This has been a difficult year, full of the sorts of occurrences that God often uses to sanctify.

Deaths.

Medical troubles.

Bills resulting from the above.

Sanctification hurts.

As I sit in the darkness, in the stillness, in the waiting that is Advent,

sometimes I don’t want to be sanctified.

Sometimes I desire comfort and more than enough more than I desire to look like Jesus.

When we give our lives to God, He takes us at our word.

All that God desires for us comes steadily on, even when we sometimes would simply rather be left alone.

We think we know what we want.

We think we know what we need.

We think we know what to do to get it.

Especially at Christmas, we think that if we don’t do it, if we settle into the waiting and be still, it won’t get done, whatever it is.

Then God comes down into our darkness and asks us to see ourselves as we truly are:

empty-handed, powerless, dependent on One who refuses to leave us to our own devices.

This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. ~ William Willimon

All of creation groans for redemption.

We are a people walking in darkness,

a people living in a land of great darkness.

We are desperate for light, desperate for rescue, and God, in His great mercy, gives us

 

a baby.

Isn’t that just like God?

All photos copyright Made Sacred 2018