Advent: Hope in the Dark

Dear Friends in Christ,

On a moody, dreary, rainy day a few weeks ago, I thumbed through to one of the Psalms that I regularly think of as the perfect partner to that kind of day—Psalm 88. I don’t know how closely you’ve read the Psalms, but if you have some time, take a new look at them. They really do cover the range of human emotions from joyful exultation to the depths of despair and everything in between. Psalm 88 is definitely on the despairing end of that spectrum. Listen to the series of rhetorical questions the Psalmist seems to scream out:

Do you work wonders for the dead?
will those who have died stand up and give you thanks?
Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave?
your faithfulness in the land of destruction?
Will your wonders be known in the dark?
or your righteousness in the country where all is forgotten?

Can’t we just get back to “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”? And that might be more pleasant. But the beauty of the Psalms is that they don’t ignore these darker parts of human life.

That is also the beauty of the season of Advent. Advent is a season where the most difficult realities of human life are on full display—darkness, judgment, death, longing. It’s a season that allows us to be honest about these realities in our lives. But not in a way that is despairing or hopeless. The heart of Advent is hope. Hope in the middle of those realities.

That’s actually the heart of the Psalm I quoted, too. As I spent some time pondering it and praying with it, something opened up for me. For all my years of reading it, I’d been reading it the wrong way. I looked at those rhetorical questions, and I’d always assumed that the answer was “no.” No, God’s faithfulness isn’t declared in the land of destruction. No, God’s wonders won’t be known in the dark.

But that’s the wrong answer. God proclaims the divine “yes.” What Advent teaches us is what the whole Christian story teaches us. The good news begins in darkness. God creates all that is out of darkness. Joseph dreams of the child Mary carries in the darkness. The holy child, God with us, is born to us on a dark night. The crucified Lord springs to new life in the darkness of the tomb.

The darkness is sometimes the place—sometimes the only place—that new grace, new hope, new life is to be found.

May God bless you and yours this Advent,
Fr. Quinn Parman+