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These are the darkest days of the year.  

In many ways, winter is a time of mourning, a lonely dirge for the beauty that has been.  Bitter winds mutter and growl through the spiderwebby branches of leafless trees.  Ice glitters on every limb and crusts the ponds and lakes.  The woods fade to muted tones—brown and silver and grey.  The grass is dead and the ground is hard and the birds are mostly silent.

But perhaps the most disheartening feature of winter is the stinginess of the daylight.  There’s no warmth in the sunbeams at this time of year, and they frequently appear weak and watery, as if they barely have the energy to stretch through the frowning clouds.  And what little daylight we do receive doesn’t last long.  Ever since Midsummer—the summer solstice, the longest day—the days have been shortening.  And now, in Arkansas, we’re experiencing well over fourteen hours of darkness each night. 

And winter nights are black and long and empty enough to chill the nerves of even the bravest soul.  When I step outside on a December night, the darkness seems to weigh on the world like a black shroud.  I feel the air crackling with the bitter cold, and I watch my breath tumble away in floating puffs.  Fingers of frost curl around every leaf and twig.   

Yes, these days—and the accompanying bleak nights—are less than encouraging.  But in the midst of this dreary season, when the days are growing shorter and the cold is becoming sharper and the dark seems to have the upper hand, something amazing happens—something that is borderline miraculous—the winter solstice.

The science behind it is fascinating.  Technically speaking, this is the point in Earth’s orbit when the tilt of the axis positions the Northern Hemisphere farthest from the sun.  This is a gradual process, begun with the autumnal equinox in September, and the day of the solstice is the culmination of the journey before the North Pole will once more begin to swing sunward.  But the bare statistical facts can never begin to encapsulate the magic that is the winter solstice.  It possesses an ethereal spiritual cadence that can’t be dissected into dusty facts and figures.  And it’s that unknown magic—like a haunting tune whose lyrics I never quite remember—that keeps me waiting outside on the evening of the winter solstice.  I pull on my warmest coat and stand atop our highest hill, waiting to welcome winter.  The sunset smolders in the west, like blazing coals banked against the edge of the world.  The silvery stalks of dry grass crunch under my feet, and the denuded trees stretch empty hands toward the heavens.  

I stand there, the cold tingling inside my nose, and I see the darkness falling, the fine mist of shadow settling over all the world.  And sometimes, if I’m very quiet, if I’m perfectly still, then there is a brief stirring in the air—more sensed than felt, more remnant than reality, just a quiet knowing that the season has changed.  On the evening of the solstice, there are no outward fanfares, no extravagant displays.  Indeed, it’s difficult to tell anything has happened at all—the cold is still bitter, the dark is still insistent, the days are still bleak and the nights are still black. 

In fact, the night of the solstice is the longest and darkest night of the entire year.  But guess what?  The night after that will be a smidgen shorter.  There will be just a few more drops of daylight than there were the day before.  And day by gentle day, the light will strengthen—a minute here, a moment there, until the world returns to the deliciously long days and brief nights of midsummer.  

And that’s the wonder—despite appearances, the dark is weakening.  The light is winning.  And it’s nothing short of a miracle—that here, now, in the dead tomb of winter, a trajectory is launching that will carry us all the way to the glimmer of spring and the glamor of summer.  And as I wait in the twilight on the darkest night of the year, I smile—because when I look beyond that blackness, I can almost, almost, smell summer in the wind. 

Isn’t it amazing?  On the darkest night of the coldest season, when the year is at its bleakest, the winter solstice arrives with a very unexpected gift—hope.  

My friends, we are shivering in some very dark nights right now.  This year has been like a leaden blanket draped over our dreams.  We’ve endured terrible natural disasters—whipping wildfires, shuddering earthquakes, cataclysmic hurricanes.  We’ve been divided as a nation—ripped apart by hatred and haughtiness, by broken promises and centuries of suspicion and political machinations.  We’ve suffered a global pandemic—a virus that threatened our health, invaded our schools, blasted our economy, and left us lonely and desperate behind our masks.  And through it all, we’ve watched the darkness appear to strengthen and its worshippers become more brazen in their idolatry.  The world around us has seemed defiant in its attempts to squelch every trace of God.  The darkness, always present, has become too blatant to ignore.  

And having suffered all these things, here we are now—in the burnt-out end of the year, the coldest and darkest time.  It’s only natural to struggle with many emotions now—from anger (“Why did this happen?”), to fear (“What will happen next?”), to grief (“I want everything to be ok again”), to finally, despair (“There’s no way out”).  

These are the days when despair squeezes our hearts in its iron fist—cold days, dark days, sad days, lonely days.  But if you’re looking upon a life that seems as desolate and barren as the December fields and woods, then I want you to remember something very important.  In the same way as the winter solstice comes in the longest and blackest night, it is often just when things look bleakest—just when we cannot see the faintest glimmer of hope anywhere—that the Light of the World flings Himself into our darkness.    

Don’t believe me?  Just consider the coming holiday—Christmas.  What better example could there be?  You see, we think of Christmas as presents and bells and carols and angel wings fluttering against the stars and a happy holy family snug in a stable.  But we tend to forget how very dark the night was when Christ was born, how great the gulf of despair in which the Jews were drowning. 

Despite what we see on Christmas cards or in nativity pageants, Palestine in the time of the birth of Christ was the epitome of hopelessness.  For starters, God was silent.  The prophecies that had studded the Old Testament like jewels suddenly ceased.  With the promise of the coming Messiah at the end of the Book of Malachi, God seemed to sign off.  By the time of Christ’s birth, the Jews had not received a word from God in four centuries!  Imagine how abandoned they must have felt.  In fact, Bible commentators refer to this period as “the four hundred silent years.”  

And to make matters worse, those four hundred years were a time of turmoil and chaos.  Israel was absorbed into the empire of Alexander the Great and later shuffled among many rulers in a time of political instability, religious oppression, and internal revolt.  Then, the Roman Empire rose to world domination and began its systematic destruction of Israelite culture and independence.  By this time, the Jews were crushed under foreign occupation, out of touch with their identity, threatened by persecution and political inveigling, and—seemingly—forgotten by God.  

If ever there was a dark night, this was it.  Can’t you imagine Bethlehem as it must have been on the night of Jesus’ birth?  Uneasy crowds grudgingly assembled for a foreign census.  Harsh Roman authorities yelling insults in an unknown tongue.  A culture disintegrating and a people divided and a nation carrying an ancient burden of weeping and woe.  A Jew in Bethlehem at that time had every reason to believe he was living in the darkest night of Israel’s history.    

Yet on that dark night, in a lonely stable, God rewrote the story.  Just as the solstice reverses the trajectory of the seasons in a single instant, God undid all the power of darkness with a single Baby’s cry.  The nights would still be dark in Bethlehem—but they would never again be as dark as they had been.  The winter would still freeze the hearts of men for a time—but it would never again have the final say.  And just as the winter solstice points a finger to summer, so the sleepy Baby in the manger on that dark night was the first step toward the bursting glory of the Resurrection.  

My friends, Christmas was not an isolated event.  God still specializes in stepping into dark nights.  He enters our illness and injury, poverty and panic, depression and disaster, addiction and anxiety, strife and sin.  No matter what starless night has engulfed us, He delights in abolishing the blackness and spotlighting us with His grace.  And when He steps into our situation, it is dramatic.  With the suddenness of the solstice, He defeats the relentless march of darkness and reverses the whole direction of our lives. 

So in these bleak days and lengthy nights, invite God into your situation.  I don’t mean simply acknowledge His Presence as a hazy philosophical reality or mouth a trite prayer of surrender.  It’s time for us to see God not as a feeble candle-flicker Who can be easily snuffed out by long nights, but as the true Light of the World—the God with the power to shred every shadow.  

And I’m convinced that when we do this, when we welcome God into our dark night, our perspective begins to change.  First, we remember to walk by faith, not by sight.  If we only stare at the soul-crushing blackness of our night, it will be easy to abandon hope and sink in despair.  But if we expect God to blaze His glory into our circumstances—if we allow the future promise of summer to penetrate the present reality of our winter—then we will have hope.  Secondly, if we are walking in faith, then we are also living in expectation of a miracle. Even as we wait for Him, we can begin to prepare our hearts for the work He will do, because we live in the confidence that He will fulfill His promises and hold true to His Word.  Lastly, we rejoice!  Certainly, when we are standing in the darkest and coldest night of our lives, then rejoicing can seem counterintuitive or counterproductive or even downright crazy.  But when you are standing in the dark of December, dare to praise Him—knowing that the God of light will shatter the blackness.  He is coming!

It’s a beautiful paradox, isn’t it—this mystical and magical time?  The winter solstice is at once the darkest and bleakest night in all the year and the wellspring of hope for brighter days and greater light.  And it’s certainly fitting that the solstice coincides so closely with Christmas, because both hold the same golden promise of hope, and both remind us of one powerful truth—no matter how desolate the night can seem, the light always prevails.  In fact, sometimes when we’re standing in the dark, the transformation has already begun—even if we don’t see it yet.  

I don’t know what dark night you’re facing right now.  I don’t hear your desperate prayers or watch your hopeless tears or feel the particular pain that’s slicing your soul.  But I do know this:  the solstice is coming.  The nights will not be quite as dark as they once were.  The days will begin to lengthen—slowly, yes, but steadily.  To our human eyes, all may still appear unchanged, an unending empty night.  But there is a shift.  The season is changing, and here, now, the light is breaking through.  

My friends, dare to believe that no night, however dark, could ever quench the glory of the One Who is Hope Himself.  Dare to believe that sometimes, the blackest nights can be transformed into the most glorious mornings.  And most importantly, dare to believe in the miracle of Christmas—when all seems lost, when despair seems to reign, when the nights are darkest… Hope is born.  

Did you enjoy this post? What are some ways the light has broken through for you this year? Let me know in the comments!

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