At Christmas time we celebrate the fulfillment of countless prophecies. For centuries God had been promising His people a Savior, and when Jesus was born, these promises were fulfilled. Or began to be fulfilled. One of those prophecies is in Isaiah 60:1–2.
“1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. 2 For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.”
Through Christ, darkness is overcome by light. But not just any light. Darkness is overcome by the light of the glory of God. Man’s dark heart, the darkness caused by sin, the ignorance imposed by Satan would all be overcome through the coming of the Son of God.
God told us this through Isaiah and other prophets, but on the night of the birth of Jesus, He used a metaphor to teach us what it would look like. That metaphor is one of the most familiar scenes of the Christmas story, the announcement of the birth to the shepherds.
“8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.’” Luke 2:8–10
The shepherds were on duty at night, in the dark. As the darkness covered the earth and surrounded the shepherds, the sky lit up around them. But it wasn’t a natural light, it was the glory of the Lord that had risen upon them and shone around them. We tend to be very literal when we think about the fulfillment of prophecies, but in the physical experience of the shepherds, we see a metaphorical fulfillment of Isaiah 60, and in their physical experience we see a foreshadowing of what light overcoming darkness would look like. Was Jesus born at night just to provide us with this wonderful picture?
Over and over, in various ways, God communicates to us that He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He not only tells us, He also shows us that in Him alone is our forgiveness, our healing, our transformation, and our understanding. And now we’re given a metaphor that we experience daily. Every night as we are surrounded by darkness, we are to be reminded that though we were in darkness, God’s light overcame that darkness and flooded our lives through the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, just as the shepherds’ hill was flooded with light on that first Christmas eve.
The View from Dothan 