The Light Behind the Silence

The Light Behind the Silence

The December air held that peculiar stillness that comes just before dusk, when the world seems to pause between breaths. Jonathan walked his familiar route through the neighborhood

, his footsteps echoing softly on the frost-kissed pavement. The Christmas lights were beginning to twinkle to life, one house at a time, like stars awakening to their purpose.

He had walked this path a thousand times, yet tonight something felt different. Or perhaps it was he who was different.

Jonathan passed the Miller house with its elaborate display, reindeer frozen mid-leap, candy canes lining the walkway, a cheerful inflatable snowman waving mechanically at no one in particular. The lights blinked their relentless rhythm: red, green, white, repeat. Behind those glowing windows, he could see silhouettes moving about, preparing dinner perhaps, or wrapping gifts, or simply existing in the warm glow of togetherness.

He wondered about their sorrows.

It was a strange thought to have while looking at such obvious festivity, but Jonathan had learned something in his years of walking and watching: every heart carries what the world cannot see. Mrs. Miller always waved so cheerfully when she retrieved her mail, yet he'd noticed her pause sometimes, mid-wave, as if suddenly remembering something that made her smile fade just a fraction. Mr. Miller kept the yard immaculate, but Jonathan had seen him sitting alone on the porch steps late at night, just sitting, staring at nothing.

"Every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not," Longfellow had written, "and oftentimes we call him cold, when he is only sad."

Jonathan pulled his coat tighter against the evening chill. He understood this now in ways he hadn't when he was younger. There were things in his own heart, griefs that had no words, joys too sacred to speak aloud, questions that had no answers but had somehow become companions rather than torments. He carried them all, and they had shaped him into something both softer and stronger than he'd been before.

The Thompson house came into view next, more modest in its decorations but no less intentional. A simple wreath on the door, white lights tracing the roofline, a single candle glowing in each window. Jonathan knew that Sarah Thompson had lost her husband two Christmases ago. Yet here she was, still putting up lights, still marking the season. He'd seen her placing the wreath just yesterday, standing back to adjust it with the same care she'd shown when her husband was alive.

Was she cold? No. She was carrying forward.

"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart," Goethe had observed. It was true, Jonathan thought. He saw the quiet courage in Sarah's wreath because he, too, had learned to continue when everything in him wanted to stop. He saw the complexity behind the Millers elaborate display because he knew that sometimes people decorate the outside to match what they wish they felt inside and sometimes it actually works, at least a little.

And sometimes, Jonathan reflected, the best moments of life are the ones you can't tell anyone about.

He thought of the morning last week when he'd watched the sunrise from his bedroom window as had let the curtains drawn open the previous night, coffee growing cold in his hands, and had felt such an overwhelming sense of being held by something greater than himself that tears had simply come. Not sad tears, not happy tears, just tears of recognition, that he was known, that he mattered, that somehow, impossibly, everything was going to be all right even when it wasn't all right at all.

Who could he tell about that? His sisters would worry. His friends would offer solutions. But it wasn't something to be fixed or explained. It was something to be carried, like a treasure wrapped in ordinary brown paper.

The neighbourhood Christmas tree stood at the corner where Maple Street met Oak Avenue, its lights casting coloured shadows on the snow that had begun to fall. Jonathan stopped there, as he often did, and let the cold flakes settle on his shoulders.

And then, as if his wandering thoughts had been leading him here all along, a verse rose up in his mind with the clarity of a bell: "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned." Isaiah 9:2

A light has dawned.

Not will dawn. Has dawned.

Jonathan looked around at the neighbourhood with new eyes. The chaos was still there, he could hear a couple arguing in the distance, a dog barking frantically, a car alarm bleating its anxiety into the night. The uncertainty was still there too. Tomorrow the bills would still need paying, the news would still be troubling, the ache in his shin bone would still remind him that time moves in only one direction.

But the light had dawned.

It had dawned in Sarah Thompson's wreath, hung with trembling hands and steady resolve. It had dawned in the Millers elaborate display, a declaration that beauty and hope are worth the effort. It had dawned in Jonathan's own silent morning tears, in the knowing that preceded words.

The Light had dawned two thousand twenty years ago in the most unlikely of places-not in a palace or temple, but in a stable among animals and straw and the heavy breathing of a young mother who carried her own secret sorrows and unspeakable joys. That Light had grown into a man who would say, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Take heart.

In the midst of trouble, in the land of deep darkness, in the valley of secret sorrows and silent joys-take heart.

Jonathan understood now what had felt different about tonight’s walk. It wasn’t that the chaos had lessened or the uncertainty had resolved. It was that he had learned to see what he carried in his heart: the Light that had dawned and continued to dawn, quiet and persistent as the snow, bright and unfailing as the star that had once led seekers to a manger.

The world called It Christmas, this celebration of light in darkness. But Jonathan knew it was more than a season. It was a statement of reality, a defiant declaration that darkness would never have the final word. The Light had come. The Light was here. The Light would remain.

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

In our hearts. Not just in the sky or in the stable or in the ancient story, but in the actual beating muscle of our everyday lives. In Sarah Thompson's grief-hollowed heart. In the Millers' complicated hearts. In Jonathan's own weather-worn, question-carrying, secretly joyful heart.

He started walking again, but slower now, more deliberately. He wanted to carry this awareness forward, to walk through the rest of his life knowing that he carried light, that everyone he passed carried light, that the darkness, no matter how deep had already been interrupted by something stronger than itself.

The snow fell heavier, and the Christmas lights blurred into halos of red, green, white, and gold. Jonathan thought of Mary, treasuring things in her heart. He thought of the shepherds, who must have carried the memory of angels singing in the fields for the rest of their lives. He thought of Simeon in the temple, old and patient, who had waited so long to see the Light that when he finally held it in his arms, he was ready to die in peace.

"For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." (Luke 2:30-32)

A light for revelation. A light that reveals what was always true but hidden, like a candle held up to an ancient text, suddenly making the words readable.

Jonathan was filled, quite suddenly, with joy. Not the boisterous, obvious kind that demands to be photographed and shared. But the deep kind, the kind that settles in your bones and makes you smile at strangers, forgive old hurts, and believe that redemption is always possible, even when you can't see how.

Especially when you can't see how.

That was faith, wasn't it? Walking forward in the dark because you'd once seen the Light and it had changed everything. Not because the darkness wasn't real, but because the Light was more real.

He passed a young couple standing by their car, clearly having some kind of difficulty. The man was on his phone, frustrated. The woman was holding a baby, bouncing gently, trying to keep the child from crying. Jonathan caught her eye and smiled. She smiled back, a tired but genuine smile, and in that moment, they were fellow travellers, fellow carriers of secret sorrows and unspeakable joys, fellow walkers in a world where light had dawned.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5)

Has not. Will not. Cannot.

Jonathan thought of all the things he couldn't control-the economy, the news headlines of his homeland, the health reports, and his future. He thought of all the sorrows he couldn't speak, all the folks who might have taken him and his dear wife for granted, the losses that had no comfort except time and grace. He thought of all the moments of inexplicable peace he could never adequately explain.

And he was grateful for all of it.

Not because it was easy, but because it was true. Because in the midst of it all, in the very center of uncertainty and chaos and silent struggle, there was Light. Persistent, gentle, unquenchable Light. The kind of light that doesn't shout or force, but simply is, waiting to be noticed by anyone with eyes willing to see.

As Jonathan turned onto his own street and saw his modest house with its single strand of white lights around the door, he felt it again, that sense of being known and held. He carried secret sorrows, yes. He carried joys too sacred for words. He carried questions that might never be answered in this life.

But above all, beneath all, within all, he carried Light. And that made all the difference.

The snow continued to fall as Jonathan climbed the steps to his front door. Behind him, the neighborhood settled into evening, lights glowing in windows, smoke rising from chimneys, life continuing in all its beautiful, broken, hopeful complexity.

And in the midst of it all, silent but certain as starlight, Christmas was coming.

The Light had dawned.

The Light was dawning still.

Reflection:

As you walk through your own life this Christmas season, consider: What secret sorrows do you carry that the world knows not? What unspeakable joys have you experienced that words cannot capture? And in the midst of both-in the silent, sacred center of your heart can you sense the Light that has dawned?

You are not cold. You are not alone. You are a bearer of Light, a carrier of the greatest story ever told, a walking declaration that darkness will never have the final word.

"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you." (Isaiah 60:1)

Arise. Shine. Not because you have it all figured out, not because the chaos has ceased, not because the sorrows have ended.

But because the Light has come.

And that changes everything.