Light on the Barn
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.
John 1:5
When God created the world, He made day and night. He made the heavens and ocean. He made light to reign over each of them. He made the sun to shine over the day and the moon to glow over the night. He made the stars to light up the heavens. Even creatures of the sea can illuminate it with sparkling lights and iridescent blobs!
Christmas gave this world a wonderful gift: the light of Jesus which always comes into the darkness and owns it. Christmas gifted us this by using a barn filled with a few people to introduce the world to His light.
Christmas used a barn, seated lonely in the distance: positioned away from the city lights and the view of lamps shining in windows across the road.
Christmas used a barn, tucked away and dirty: filled with all the treasures animals leave for unsuspecting feet to step on as they walk across the hay lining the mud floor.
Christmas used a barn, cluttered and messy: lined with broken tools that needed to be fixed making it hard to find a comfortable place to sit and rest.
Christmas used a barn that represented the spiritual state of the world: a world covered in darkness. A world covered in the dirtiness and brokenness of sin. A world left lonely because experiencing the intimacy of God being with it all the time as Emmanuel wasn’t always present.
Yet on the first Christmas, in this darkness, light emerged.
Moonbeams seeped through the rafters of the barn, illuminating it like a candlelit room: where seeing the flicker of the flame is easy and seeing the dirt smeared on our face and stuck under our fingernails is next to impossible.
A star shined brightly above the barn, reminding Mary and Joseph just how close God and Heaven were that night: where they could reach out and touch our God who is wholly perfect and our Heaven that has never been broken by sin by simply stroking a baby’s warm skin.
Men from afar followed the star straight to the barn, carrying treasures that glistened in the soft light of night: gifting them to the Man who would fix the brokenness of the world once and for all.
A boy wiser than His years came into the barn, reminding us, even before a word could be spoken from His mouth, when His light shines in the darkness the darkness does not overcome it.
And because He grew up to be the Man who hung on the cross, when His light shines in our darkness, our sin does not overcome it!
This year, let’s celebrate light not just emerging into darkness, but fully owning darkness. Because at the end of the day, this Truth will always stand firm: Jesus came to a barn, shared His light with the world, and gave His life to melt our brokenness away. So today, we can simply enjoy spending our time with Him: Immanuel.