I sat in church Sunday and watched people go up for communion. Some had lost dear ones in the last months. Oh, how heart-rending these next days will be for them! Others with advanced age or declining health know this may well be their last Christmas on this side of eternity. If that’s not where you’re at this Christmas, prepare, for sooner or later we all will be drawn into the “valley of the shadow of death.”
Isaiah 9 prophesies, “Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined” (9:2). Jesus says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Please take this to heart, from 2 Peter 1:19, “We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Today’s “O Antiphon: “O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”
“Jesus comes in joy and sorrow, shares alike our hopes and fears; Jesus comes, whate’er befalls us, cheers our hearts and dries our tears: Alleluia! Alleluia! Comforts us in failing years.” (Lutheran Service Book, 353, 4)
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