In case you have been living under the proverbial rock for the last few weeks, let me tell you that it is Christmas time. At least, that’s what all the stores and malls say. In our wonderful town, we had our Christmas parade on Sunday, the same day we at our church had our Lessons and Carols service, singing all the songs of the season. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…,” as one non-churchy song puts it.

But excuse this Grinch for saying: It’s not Christmas yet.

In our faith tradition, Christmas doesn’t come until the day does, the 25th of December, bringing with it a 12-day season. Until that time, we have what is called the season of Advent, four weeks of preparing, waiting and anticipating.

But waiting for what? Jesus has already been born; come on, get on with it.

And yet in a special way, every Advent gives us an opportunity to prepare ourselves so that Jesus and the love and peace he brings may be born in us once again. If we just count down the days to Christmas, we will miss the opportunity to be transformed, to be made different.

In our church, we do what a lot of churches do: we light candles. The days are getting shorter and darker in this, the darkest time of the year. So lighting candles may seem a little silly against all that darkness. But it is a witness, a testimony, that “the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Not that darkness will ever totally go away. We see and feel and hear so much of it in these post-election days, with people still harboring grudges and generating attacks real and verbal against those who think and look and act differently.

To get help with this, I turned to an old friend, Father Richard Rohr, who wrote in an Advent meditation: “Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything is beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we are not seeing clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff (the more common ‘liberal’ temptation). Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are apart from the darkness (the more common ‘conservative’ temptation). Instead we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness — while never doubting the light that God always is — and that we are, too…”

Face the darkness, but trust in the Light. And be the Light.

Rev. Dr. Tom Robinson is pastor of Farmville Presbyterian Church. His email address is robin216@embarqmail.com.