‘Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.’
Luke 1:78-79 NLT
Every year, windows and homes are illuminated with flickering tones of colour. And every year, there seem to be more of them — switched on earlier and earlier, as though we’re collectively trying to push back the night.
There is an innate discomfort with darkness, especially the long dark of winter.
We long for light.
We long for a world without shadows.
In Mervyn Peake’s fictional world, the castle Gormenghast is a gloomy, airless labyrinth. Its oppressive corridors twist endlessly, choking what little light there is from penetrating the cold, deep recesses of stone, stifling the joy of all who live within. At times, life feels much the same — heavy, dim, constricting — yet it is precisely within such darkness that a deep longing for light is born, a hope that even the faintest glimmer might break through and lead us out.
In Peake’s world, the glimmer comes with the birth of a child, causing the narrator, at the end of the first volume, to optimistically cry, ‘And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection!’
In our world, too, it’s a birth that summons our attention.
The Incarnate Deity comes to give light to a world sat in darkness.
Of course, we wait for all darkness to cease. But a light has come, and this light remains, evershining brightly, just like C. S. Lewis’ famous lampost in his Narnia story, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
As Heidi Haverkamp notes, ‘[Narnia’s] lamppost is a living thing. No one lights it, no one extinguishes it, and it burns without fuel. The White Witch’s winter hasn’t snuffed it out. It is a boundary, but also a promise that Aslan can make broken things new and alive. It is a beacon in the face of the dark, cold spell that lies on the land.’
Or, as John wrote when this light first came, ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.’
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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