There is a particular quality to the darkness at this time of year.
It is not the darkness of despair, nor the empty dark of absence.
It is the deep, gestational darkness - the kind a seed knows when it lies held in the earth, or a child knows in the quiet mystery of the womb.
Advent invites us into that kind of dark.
In the ancient world, people gathered close to the fire as the nights lengthened. The land withdrew, the animals withdrew and wise souls knew that now is the time to listen. Not to listen with the restless mind, but rather with the heart - that quiet inner stable where the first stirrings of hope are felt long before they are seen.
And so we too wait in the dark, alert and watching for the God who draws close bringing the promise of hope for humankind.
Such hope is of course something beyond our imagining – a hope so strange and luminous that the mind cannot grasp it. This is why Advent is the season of humility. We cannot think our way into its mystery. We can only prepare the heart, soften the soil, clear a little space within.
Like Mary, we make ourselves available.
Like the shepherds, we listen for footsteps in the night.
Like the magi, we trust that a star will rise.
The coming Light is not the kind we switch on with a flick of a switch though: it is the Light that rises out of hidden places, the stable within us, the silent earth around us, the places we thought too dark, too small, too ordinary to matter.
And yet… here comes the cosmic Christ, choosing the humble places, choosing the quiet hearts, choosing the stables of the world.
May this Advent darkness be a sanctuary for you; a place where the Holy One is already forming hope within you - long before you see it, long before you understand it, and long before the dawn.