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! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.
--- Latin prose, pre-9th cent.
It's always darkest before the dawn. Don't know if that's true, because I'm no kind of scientist. Lots of folks say it, which makes it crowd-sourced truth (the kind that matters these days). And really, when I think about it, I believe it must actually always be darkest furthest from the dawn. Right? Like, middle-of-the-night dark? Can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark? Scudding-clouds-blotting-out-the-stars dark? That kind of dark doesn't even have a shake-hands relationship with dawn. It's always darkest in the dead 3 a.m. middle of the night, dusk just a memory and dawn a lifetime away. This is the kind of dark where a little bit of light could transform the world.
To be honest, the news has felt kind of like this 3 a.m. dark lately. I say to myself, "Self, surely this is 3 a.m.; it can't get darker." Then, I turn on the news again, I open the paper, a tweet pings my iThing. And I blink my eyes to dilate my pupils, straining to see through the inky dark. The inky darker. No dawn in sight. Hope grows as thin as the blanket I pull more tightly around my shoulders, losing the battle against the darkest part of the night. Honestly, could our human family have done any more complete a job of plunging this God-gifted world into complete night than we have? Here in the middle of the night, with plenty of fault to go around, light-starved, desperate --- where can we turn?
Dayspring, Light of Light, Emmanuel ---
help us. You are our only Hope.
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