1 John 1:5 (NLT)
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
The most wonderful time of the year has officially arrived, and I could not be more excited to pull out my red-and-white striped Converse, my box of Christmas earrings, and the Johnny Mathis Christmas CD from my childhood. My love for Christmas runs wildly wide, but it also runs deep. And I’d love to take a moment to share why.
As a child, I loved Christmas—the food, the lights, the songs, the magic. I felt like anything was possible during the month of December. Through my parents’ divorce when I was in junior high, I had to hang on to that feeling. The grueling process spanned four Christmas seasons, and the magical Christmas belief that “anything is possible” turned into “everything is going to be okay.” No matter what pain the rest of the year held, at Christmas, I could believe that everything was going to be okay.
But then I hit a time in my life when I couldn’t believe that anymore.
In college, I had a nervous breakdown due to the years of unhealed trauma and the poor choices I made from that trauma. It hit in November, and it hit hard. While I look back now at that internal collapse with utter gratitude because of how Jesus used it to begin my journey with emotional healing, at the time, I was terrified. The enemy tormented me with many lies during that season, but one BIG lie was the root of all the other ones: The darkness is too strong for the light.
I knew it wasn’t true. I could recite the Bible verses, and I did—through every panic and anxiety attack. During the nights of insomnia, I knelt on the floor of my apartment bedroom, trying to worship the fear away. My mind knew the truth. But my broken heart couldn’t grasp it.
I was desperate to know—not just know in my head, but experientially know—that the light was stronger. That the darkness would not take me out.
So, what does this have to do with Christmas? I think the lyrics to one of my favorite worship songs, “King of Kings,” explain it best:
In the darkness, we were waiting
Without hope, without light
‘Til from Heaven, You came running
There was mercy in Your eyes
To fulfill the law and prophets
To a virgin came the word
From a throne of endless glory
To a cradle in the dirt
While not specifically a Christmas song, “King of Kings” reminds me that Christmas time is when we celebrate the Father seeing us in our broken hopelessness, headed for absolute destruction, and saying, “This isn’t too hard for Me.” Our darkness didn’t scare Him. In fact, with a tiny baby, He scared the darkness. With one little cry from a manger, the darkness began to flee.
You don’t normally think of “spiritual warfare” when you think about Christmas, but after the cross and the empty tomb, I think the manger filled with hay is the next biggest act of spiritual warfare. What better way to tell darkness that its time is up than with the Son of God taking on flesh as a helpless baby?
I don’t know what darkness you may experience this Christmas season. Maybe family pain. Maybe loss or betrayal. Maybe disappointment. Maybe fear or anxiety. And maybe you need to be told that anything is possible or that everything is going to be okay. But even more than that, I want you to know one thing: The darkness will never be stronger than the light. The light will always win.
My experiential knowledge that the darkness wasn’t stronger than the light didn’t come overnight. It wasn’t some instant Christmas miracle. It took years of prayer ministry, worshipping, studying the Bible, and a deliverance session here and there. I had to build history and intimacy with God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But now I know. And now when I sing Christmas carols, I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes. While the truth that we’ve been brought out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9) isn’t just for December 25th, something about Christmas time makes it resonate a little more deeply.
Maybe because it all started with a baby in a manger—the light in our darkness.