6 O come, O Bright and Morning Star,
and bring us comfort from afar!
Dispel the shadows of the night
and turn our darkness into light.
There are days when morning is a long time coming. The above photo was taken on one of those mornings. It was January 2010. We had just got back to Vancouver from Christmas in the UK. Our eldest child, then 10 months old had not readjusted to Pacific time. He had been awake since 1, and it felt like a very long time until dawn.
Around 8, deciding that he needed to sleep, and that we needed a kettle, I set off to walk some distance into one of the shopping areas with eldest in the stroller, eventually happily sleeping. On the way I got this view of the dawn, the sun glinting off the North Shore mountains, and the estuary, and my heart rose slightly through the tiredness. There was a dawn coming. Day would be here.
Zechariah prophesies over his child in Luke 1 the following words:
76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
John’s role will be to prepare the way for Yahweh’s coming. The people may live in the darkness and shadow of death described by Isaiah in chapter 9, but dawn is coming. The tender mercy of our God will bring light.
In the verse of the hymn Jesus is described as the morning star, as he is in 2 Peter 1:19 and Revelation 22. The morning star is the star that heralds the coming dawn.
I remember walking to vote last year in December’s general election. It was evening, and the darkness felt somehow tangible and greater than simply the darkness of a December evening. The lack of good choices weighed heavily on me, and I dreaded the coming result. It seemed to me that for some time we had, as a nation, been turning on back on the hard choices and seeking relief in easy answers.
I feared for what that would mean for our nation over the coming year. And if anything that darkness seems all the more tangible now. I walked up the local high street late on Saturday afternoon with a blood red sun descending over the local docks. There are a number of ‘holes’ – places that used to be shops, casualties already of 2020.
In our city there are families who are kept fed by food parcels, where the money has run out. Hospitals in our country are once more filling up with those ill from covid – and those who desperately need the treatment for other conditions face ever longer waits.
In such a time we long for wise leadership, leadership that takes the time to stop and listen before acting – yet it feels that we have leaders who are running to keep up with events. Leaders who want to sound cheerful and provide hope, but who do not have the wisdom to take the hard choices at the right time.
We are tired. Tired of all the headlines and disasters of 2020. Tired of the lack of hope. Tired of the changes of plans. Tired of celebrating Christmas without those we love nearby. Tired of thinking through every meet up and how it will work.
And yet the light is coming. The tender mercy of our God is real. Those walking in the shadow of darkness have glimpsed the light. It may only be the glimpse of the crown to come, but the light is real, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
And so we sing, so we plead O come, O bright and Morning star – come, and guide our feet into the ways of peace, of wholeness. In our darkness, come.
Lighten our darkness Lord, we pray,
Anglican Prayer book
and in your great mercy defend us
from all perils and dangers of this night,
for the love of your only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
We wait in the darkness, more than watchmen wait for morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning (Psalm 130).
We wait in the darkness for the morning star.
We wait in the darkness with all those who have prayed and waited in the darkness before us. We pray and we wait with those who waited at Jesus first coming.
We pray and wait for the rising sun from heaven to shine upon us, and guide our feet into the paths of peace and wholeness, bring us the comfort that only he can bring.
In the darkness we sit. In the darkness we allow the unanswered questions to exist. Neither shutting down the questions – nor allowing them to pull our faith down. Instead we sit and we bring those questions to God. We speak bluntly and directly to him. We lament the state of the world, the church, our nation and our own lives.
Perhaps this Christmas time, in this most unusual of all Christmas seasons we are called to spend time simply sitting with the darkness. Allowing ourselves to feel the reality of the darkness. Realising afresh the powerlessness we have in the face of the darkness.
And allowing that powerlessness in the midst of the darkness to drive us back to the light which still shines, and that we have the promise of the fullness of dawn to come.
Joshua's Tree Rooted 