Advent: Peace

 What brings you peace in dark places?

December is the darkest month of the year and for some of us this has been one of the darkest years in our lifetime.  Advent is about how God brings light into our darkness (Isaiah 9:2, John 12:46).  Fittingly we celebrate Advent with candles: Candle one of Advent is Hope, the second is Love, the third is Joy and the last is Peace.

Peace means many things.  It can mean the absence of national enmity.  It can mean no personal conflict.  It can mean, like the Hebrew word Shalom, the wholeness and rightness of the world.

So, what do we do with the "peace on earth..." proclamation the angels gave the shepherds at the first Christmas?  What is peace on earth when Boko Haram kidnaps hundreds of boys and girls, when communities and police can't agree on how to best protect cities like Minneapolis, when those who pledged to protect and teach instead molest and use, when we can't stomach even calling a relative due to past pain, when we see a virus infecting and killing and our response to it is arguing and name calling?

What do we do when peace has been proclaimed but the world still looks and feels dark and scary and chaotic and dangerous?

My three-year-old son Joshua has recently become scared of the dark.  Children being scared of the dark really isn't as silly as we think it is.  Naïvety wears off and children realize some things want to hurt them.  They, like adults, become afraid of the unknown. They insert monsters into their unknown and we insert expensive car repairs or floods or muggers into our unknown.  

Today I asked Joshua, "Are you afraid of going into a dark room when you hold my hand?"  "No," he replied, "I'm afraid when I go into a dark room alone."

Holding Daddy's hand calms whatever fear cripples Joshua from entering the dark playroom.  This reality is precisely the peace that Christmas offers us.

God promises to be with us.

"Even when I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me."
-Psalm 23:4

We see this promise littered all over the Bible: Isaiah 41:10, Joshua 1:9, Romans 8:38-39, Hebrews 13:5, etc.  God promises to be with us, before us, behind us, within us.  God can give us peace through His presence.  Christmas confirms this.

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel' ... which means, 'God with us.'" -Matthew 1:23

When we walk in the dark places we can have peace because Jesus was born to be Immanuel.  He came to be God with us.  He came so that we can have the Holy Spirit indwelling us.  Jesus came so our hands can be held in the dark.

Jesus will come again to make the full peace He provides a full reality.  He will come again to end injustice, violence and all malevolence.  Until then, we hold on to the promises tight enough to have tranquil peace in a still dark world.

The peace proclaimed 2,000 year ago is here, but not yet.  During Advent we meditate on Hope here but coming, Love felt but not fully, Joy experienced but wanting more, and Peace here and now but also not yet.

2020 has taken us all into to rooms darker than we would have chosen.  Rooms lonelier and scarier.  2020 has brought hundreds of thousands of my countrymen to the valley of the shadow of death.  Latch onto the promised Immanuel.  Peacefully hold on to your Daddy's hand in the dark today.