Dark Is the Night
An unkind social media post.
Disrobing in a photo exchange.
Arranging a meeting that results in addiction, or pregnancy.
After 14 years of working with teens at my church, I have learned one thing: If they are going to have regrets, it will be because of something done online, after midnight.
Any shock at their “online regrets” can quickly give way to empathy:
My teen years were different. I didn’t have access to secretly explore anything and everything.
I didn’t have the world’s airbrushed highlight reel paraded through my social media.
And I certainly didn’t have to face either of those things while lying in bed, half-drunk with lack of sleep, in the dark, alone.
Perhaps, like me, you grew up without the Internet on your phone.
But we have all had dark nights.
Met at Work summed it up in (I think) their greatest song: I can’t get to sleep / I think about the implications / Of diving in too deep / And possibly the complications / Especially at night / I worry over situations. …
Your nighttime companions are your regrets, fears, worries, inadequacies and loneliness. As they run through your mind, your chest tightens, and you find yourself sighing. A dull feeling settles in your stomach: desperation, hopelessness.
Isn’t it amazing how often those dark thoughts seem unreal in the light? To finish the lyric: I worry over situations that / I know will be all right / It’s just overkill.
Music Is the Moon
If ever there was a teen with a dark night, it was Mary.
She was already in a humbling position: A conquered nationality. A despised ethnicity. A female. A youth.
And then an angel announced a new addition to her status: an unmarried mother. She would bear the savior of the world.
Imagine the curiosity, alarm and perhaps terror in the young girl’s one question: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
Once that question was answered, instead of feeling troubled, she chose trust: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Shortly after identifying herself as God’s servant, she penned one of the greatest song lyrics of all time. The first half:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
Luke 1:46b-50
What do we make of this? Why these words?
Imagine for a moment there is a musical instrument called a whistleharp.
In Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga (a very grownup children’s fantasy), a whistleharp bard makes the following analogy.
“… Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the sun can seem like it was only ever a dream. We need something to remind us that it still exists, even if we can’t see it. We need something beautiful hanging in the dark sky to remind us there is such a thing as daylight. Sometimes, Queen Sara”–Armulyn strummed his whistleharp–“music is the moon.”
Andrew Peterson, “The Warden and the Wolf King”
Mary is a magnifier. Not a microscope but a telescope. It is night, and we are far from God, but she shows us the moon, giving us hope that daylight is coming.
What Hope Is Not
“Hope is not a strategy.” That’s something we often say in my line of work.
It’s a valid saying, if you think of hope as just “wishful thinking.”
A wise colleague reminded me of James Stockdale, who survived torture in a Vietnam POW camp and went on to become the Navy’s vice admiral. He said the optimists didn’t survive prison. Because they constantly thought they were going to be home in a few months, they eventually “died of a broken heart.”
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–which you can never afford to lose–with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
James Stockdale, quoted in Jim Collins, “Good to Great“
Mary confronted brutal facts in her truly dark night. After the shame of her pregnancy, the blood spilt in labor would be joined by the blood of countless Bethlehem babies, slaughtered at a king’s decree in an attempt to eliminate the young Messiah as a rival. She became a refugee on the run.
Hope is also not just muddling through, getting along:
The modern era cannot be bothered with finding new answers to old questions like: What is man and what are his purposes? Rather, it demands of its schools: How can modern man better get along in this complicated world? Getting along–far from suggesting any sort of Socratic self-knowledge or stoical self-restraint–implies the mastery of increasingly sophisticated methods of control over the environment and over others.
David V. Hicks, “Norms & Nobility“
Mary did not even pretend to have control. In fact, her own son’s blood eventually would join the slaughtered children.
Her very name prophesies it: It echoes her Bethlehem namesake, Naomi (“pleasant”) who renamed herself Mara (“bitter”) when her husband and sons died: “The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.”
This savior of the world she bore was going to die. She would experience bitterness.
The Upside-Down Song
Mary was not guilty of wishful thinking; she confronted brutal realities.
Mary was not guilty of just trying to get by; she was much more invested in, as Hicks would say, her “purpose” as a servant of God.
In her humility, she accepted God’s plan as better than hers. She believed that God, not herself, would prevail. The second half:
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.
Luke 1:51-55
What a reversal: The proud scattered, the humble exalted. The rich sent away, the hungry filled. How could she dare suggest this upside-down turn of events would be the ultimate result of current circumstances?
Mary knew her scriptures. The lyrics are filled with allusions to Old Testament promises. I think, because she had marinated in the scriptures, she knew what God was really like. And that gave her hope.
In tonight’s darkness, my family will light the candle of Hope. And my thoughts will turn to Mary’s song of hope. Advent, Fleming Rutledge says, is “the season that begins in the dark.”
But there are promises in scripture. Daylight is coming.
This is part of a series on Advent. Click here for an introductory post and the first candle, Expectation. Next Sunday we look at the daylight promised: Gaudete!