Darkness. We wait for the Promised One in darkness. And we wait not in the beautiful darkness of a moonless night, but in the ugly darkness of a good creation dissolved into chaos. Isaiah saw it as the setting for this prophetic oracle concerning the Promised One: "Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness" (Is 8:21-22).
Darkness seems incompatible with our desire to make the advent season a time of anticipation and joy for family and friends. Yet this very season of anticipated joys often becomes, for many, a season of darkness-of keenly felt suffering and hopelessness. Despite our inclination to whitewash such inconvenient realities, the prophet will have none of it. Instead, the darkness is fully acknowledged and named
But darkness does not have the final word. Instead, it becomes the divinely chosen context for the revelation of the Promised One who is to come: "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light . . .”
