“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.” When the Israelites were out in the wilderness, it sure seemed to them that heaven and earth had passed away. The heavens were still there, the stars, the constellations, perhaps a comet or a meteor, and the brilliant view of the Milky Way at night. But, just a few days prior they had seen the heavens pass away, the moon turned to blood, the sun and the stars covered in thick darkness, rolled away like a scroll in the middle of the day, as the angels of God came to judge Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. As they wandered through the wilderness, it was not the light of the stars that guided them, those ever-present luminaries that the ancient mariners used to traverse the globe. Rather, it was a simple guiding light, the presence of God in a flickering torch.

A famous Christian hymn was written about that flickering torch: John Henry Newman’s “Lead kindly light.”

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on;

Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

As Anthony Esolen recently noted, Newman’s hymn, a reflection on God’s light that guided Israel through the wilderness, has come to inspire generations of Christians. Newman’s was the favorite hymn of President McKinley. After the assassination attempt, he and his wife sang the hymn together as he passed away. In the mines of Durham England, in 1909, after a tragic accident left two dozen men and boys trapped in a mine shaft, as one of the boys succumbed to his injuries, the others sang to him as he passed away, “Lead kindly light”. When Betsy and Corrie ten Boom were dragged away to the concentration camp they sang this hymn.

“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.” God’s word is this world’s light, a light that never passes away. In Advent Christ is asking us to look to that light, even amidst the encircling gloom of this life. You won’t ever really know what lies ahead in this wilderness. You won’t be able to see the distant scene, but putting your faith in Christ’s guiding light, you can always say, “one step enough for me.”

You get a picture of the gloom of this world in St. Luke’s Gospel. But you also see the wonderful truth, that God will never abandon us to the gloom. “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations…Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (S. Luke 21:25-28).

Lift up your heads when you see these things come to pass. What a strange thing to say. What a strange thing to see, the heavens passing away and whole nations of the earth trembling in terror and distress. Of course our heads will be lifted up in that day, because everyone will be looking up to see this thing that the prophet Isaiah called God’s “strange work” in the skies. So, why does Christ tell us to lift up our heads when they will already be lifted up? Because, as he says a little later in St. Luke’s Gospel, the wicked inhabitants of the earth will be terrified by the signs of His coming, and though they see the signs appear in the heavens, they will turn away in fear. “Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.”

In the 1960s in my home town of Laurel, MS there was an event that caused many people to look to the skies and many others to run in fear. Not my grandfather, though. When he was awakened in the middle of the night, along with everyone else in his neighborhood, by thundering explosions and what sounded like rockets shooting up in the air, and bright lights that seemed to light up the whole world for minutes on end. When he saw it, my grandfather immediately loaded everyone up in the car, and drove straight toward the commotion. My mother was just a little girl, and she was terrified. They could see people fleeing the scene, but they were driving the opposite way, in the direction of ground zero. It turns out, the explosions were caused by a train derailment. 15 tank cars of liquefied petroleum gas had derailed, and the rockets that they saw in the sky were whole train cars, shooting up into the air like toys. In the end, two people died and $3 million dollars worth of property was destroyed before the train cars burned themselves out. Thankfully, my grandfather was persuaded to turn around and head back home.

Needless to say, most people turn away when they see terrifying things, but Christ is saying, in that day, we will be more like those who run to ground zero, not just out of curiosity, but because we know that the great and terrible day of the Lord will usher in an era of everlasting peace and joy and rest and love and hope and celebration and reunion and every other good thing that we could have hoped for; indeed, more than we could have ever imagined. But, we must be ready for that day. We must be prepared, when that day comes, not to flee the scene in fear, not to run from Christ our savior but to stand in awe at his presence.

Jesus says, when you see the buds appear on the fig tree, then you may know that summer is approaching. Likewise, when you see the absence of any bud, the darkness of the world surrounding you, so thick that at times you just can’t see anything good anymore; When conflicts arise between brothers, between father and son, mother and daughter, husband and wife; When the truth about who we are and who God made us to be is denied by everyone around us, and when we try to speak the truth, even in the kindest and most loving way, and our words are twisted around; When the trials of life don’t get any easier, and in fact they just stack up, one on top of another, trial after trial after trial, and we simply just can’t bear it any longer. Look for the bud. The darkness that descended upon the Egyptians was a thick darkness that no light could penetrate. But, there was one place in Egypt that night, one community where all the lights were on. In the little backwater country of Goshen, where God’s people dwelt, there was light. “Lead kindly light…Lead thou me on; Keep thou my feet. I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.”

You’ve heard before that when Dietrich Bonhoeffer languished in a Nazi prison, awaiting his execution. As he waited in the darkness, knowing that no one was coming to save him, he wrote a meditation on the season of Advent. He said, “A prison cell in which one waits, hopes,…and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” It was not the gloom of this world that occupied Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, because he had already fixed his sight on something higher, somewhere better. It was the promise of Christ’s return, the Dayspring from on high, whom Zechariah said would be “a light to lighten the Gentiles.” What Bonhoeffer realized in his cell was that for his whole life he had already dwelt in the prison of this dark world. His imprisonment, even his execution, then, would not be a defeat or even a thing to be afraid of, but it would be the beginning of a new and perfect life. Indeed, we too must be prepared, to look up, to stand on the promises of God, who has given us his word, a word that will never pass away, saying, “Lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” We must be ready at all times to stand upon the rock of Christ, to be “completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside” and that One is coming, indeed the only One who is both the Key and the Door to eternity.

If you have any faith, then you know the warmth, and the zeal, and the conviction, the power, the healing, the freedom and consolation of God’s voice echoing forth from the pages of Holy Scripture. You know that there is no conflict in your life so horrible, that the gentle and loving voice of your heavenly Father, the voice of Christ your brother, your savior, there is no conflict so severe that that voice cannot in the blink of an eye, transform it into a victory. Those whose hope and joy hangs upon God’s word, who daily meditate upon it, will stand and look up in the day of Christ’s visitation. Those whose lives are shielded by faith and defended by his Word and Goodness will keep their eyes looking upward in eager expectation for that Day when all the powers of darkness will flee in fear, as the King of heaven descends to earth, and all the hosts of heaven with him, to open the door of everlasting freedom. Let us stand, therefore, and look up. And when we’ve done all. Stand.