You may know that Advent is my favorite season of the church year. This year I am finding it even more meaningful.

In Advent we expectantly wait for something that has already happened, is happening and will happen. Christ has been born into this world, is being born into this world and will return to this world. It's mysterious.

A phrase about advent that is often used is: already but not yet. I am certainly in an already but not yet time in my life.

Our invocation for Advent has words from John 1:5

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

The Gospel today was Luke 3:1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

Pastor Hoffman preached a beautiful sermon on this text today. He highlighted the passage I bolded above.

I am still in a wilderness time, a dark time. There are moments when I feel the darkness will overcome me, that there is no path out of the wilderness.

I am beginning to understand that the while the darkness doesn't overcome the light, the light doesn't overcome the darkness either. More importantly, it doesn't need to.