“The people who sat in darkness saw a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned” (Matthew 4:16).

Let’s do a bit of time travel and fast forward to our day. What has changed in 2,000 years?

• The pace of life seems to have at least doubled. We measure time by the split seconds now.
  
• Wardrobes have changed (thank God for Levi).
  
• Technology has changed at light speed.
  
• There’s been astounding advances in medicine.
  
• We’ve invented countless means of travel. Bicycles, planes, trains and automobiles.
  
• Humans have traveled to the moon.
  
• Unmanned craft have visited or flown by most of the planets in our solar system.
  
• And my favorite…multitudes of musical instruments and styles have emerged.

We’ve advanced, progressed, conquered. But with all our wonderful discoveries and achievements, we have not, on our own, escaped that stubborn “darkness.” It starts in the human heart, aided and abetted by an unseen, spiritual but very real enemy.

And the darkness within us inevitably spills out of us creating cultural, systemic and widespread spiritual darkness on grand scales. We’ve become content to live in the “shadows” on this battlefield where darkness and light clash, where good and evil compete for dominance in this struggle that’s as ancient as human history. Sitting around campfires rather than “caffeine stores,” our ancestors longed for the lifting of their darkness.

Then this baby was born, a child with many names, including, “The Light of the World,” the Light that would cancel the “shadow of death” as Jesus, the eternal Son of God, pierced the frightening darkness we had settled into. Then that “Daystar” dawned. Mary’s baby came ready to fight and conquer our darkness. Hallelujah! The Light has come.