O come Thou Dayspring come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death’s dark shadows put to flight

Rejoice, rejoice Emmanual

Shall come to thee O Israel

The days of winter bring cold and darkness, and with those cold, dark days seems to come a feeling of heaviness and loneliness. Like the creation around us, we tend to retreat in the cold and the dark. One such creature is the wood frog. Wood frogs quite literally retreat into a dark layer of leaves on the ground and then freeze during the winter. Their bodies sense the coming cold and then produce a sort of antifreeze so that everything in them can freeze and stop except for the space within their cells. Then one, warm spring day the wood frog begins to thaw and live again. But it takes trusting and knowing the light and warmth of spring will come again for the wood frog to “live” during the cold and dark winter.

Luke 1:78-79 says, “because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Maybe physically you feel the weight of the winter darkness. Maybe emotionally you feel the weight of loneliness and sorrow. Maybe spiritually you feel the weight of darkness and aloneness. Whatever kind of dark place you find yourself in this advent, remember the words prophesied by Zechariah about your Redeemer: “the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Just like the wood frog will not wake and be silent, we also ought to rejoice that the Light has come to our darkness. Not only has He come, but He put death’s dark shadows to flight! Rejoice, rejoice!

— Kimber Callen