Advent Meditation: The True Light Sent to Deepest Darkness

Isaiah 9:2-3

If you’ve worshiped at an Advent service, at Lessons and Carols, or a Hanging of the Greens celebration, you’ve heard this scripture. People collapsing at death’s door step were rescued from darkness by the One, True Light. We light another candle on the Advent wreath to symbolize the reality of desperate people witnessing the dawn. This message becomes even more rich and hopeful when we include verses 8:22-9:1. Describing people who have “no light of dawn,” Isaiah continues: 

8:22. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness. 9:1. Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past the LORD humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan. 

When the Assyrian army came blazing across Israel around 733 BC, the northern-most tribes took the initial blows. They were the first people in the Northern Kingdom to collapse under their oppressors. The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali experienced utter devastation before Assyria moved south and east to the other tribes. Isaiah looks forward to a time when the Light of the world will minister around the Sea of Galilee – in the very same areas that were taken captive. The areas hardest hit by the Assyrians, the people most scattered, and the towns slowest to recover – they are the ones to whom the Good News comes. The darkness, regardless of how it shows up, will never overcome the Light (John 1:1-5). 

We see war-torn nations, communities, families, and individuals today walking in darkness. We might be facing troubling times as well. Isaiah does not offer cheap optimism here; he speaks what God inspires and proclaims that the Messiah is the victorious light in this world. The people of God then and the people of God now are promised the same joy that farmers experience during a fruitful harvest – an unmatchable joy – no matter how heavy the darkness. And those people carrying the heaviest burdens, living with unspeakable sorrows, they will rejoice with the deepest gratitude.