An Advent Journey - 9th December

Read: Isaiah 9 vs 1-7

These days it’s dark in the mornings. You look out and you can’t really see anything, until that is when the sun rises. Over the last two days our Advent Journey has had us in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet, someone who spoke God’s Word into the lives of the people round about 700BC.

There are different words you could use to describe the days in which Isaiah lived. One of those words would be the word ‘darkness’. These were days when you looked out into the world and it was hard to see what was really going on, and it was hard to see what God was doing and where He was.

Today in Isaiah 9 comes the announcement, just because you can’t see Him, doesn’t mean that God isn’t there, there is a day coming when the sun will rise and darkness will give way to light. Isaiah looks forward to Christmas.

The words of this chapter are well known at carol services, a reading that pictures people walking in darkness but now finding that ‘a great light’ (vs 2) is dawning on them. A people getting bigger, a day of rescue and victory (vs. 3). But how does all this happen? Where does all this come from?

‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given’ (vs. 6)

Isaiah looks forward to the birth of a baby, a ‘Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’ (vs.6)

Isaiah 9 vs 1-7 reads like an explosion of light in a dark world, the inbreaking of hope in the midst of hopelessness, something not accomplished by us, but something won for us, all by ‘the zeal of the LORD Almighty’ (vs. 7).

I look out the window of my study this morning and I see darkness. But light will come and when the Light comes everything looks different.

Prayer: Father thank you that you have sent Jesus into the darkness of this world. May His light, His great light, shine upon us today we pray. Amen.