Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, December 21, 2025
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: In Jesus, who is the light, we are safe to engage. Safe to hope. And safe to rejoice.
The words of our Psalmist this morning sum up pretty well where we, as a church, are in this season of Advent: “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for morning…”
More than those who watch for morning. It sounds like our Psalmist knows what it means to watch for the morning. Like she is clutching onto a tiny light in the middle of some very intense, very encompassing darkness (or maybe just the idea of a tiny light). It sounds like she is desperate. Anxious. Convicted, but suspended in her waiting and ready for something different.
On this, the fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear from the author of the Gospel of John the words that at this point are so familiar to us: “In the Beginning was the Word.” On this Sunday, we say again the words we’ve said countless times already, most likely in call-and-repeat form: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.”
Let’s really root down into these words. Let’s not allow our familiarity to become complacency; our memorization to become a glossing over; our exposure to this text to manifest in a kind of unintentionally blasé Seinfeld response—“Yada, yada, yada.” Let’s write ourselves as the Psalmist and investigate what our hope really means. What our joy is really built on.
You’ll notice that the author of the Gospel of John didn’t say: “Once you know Jesus, the darkness will stop feeling like the most terrifying thing you could possibly experience.” He did not promise that, in a life with Christ, the light will get any bigger or closer or warmer to us.
Here’s what he did promise, though: that the darkness would not overcome the light. And that’s such a better promise. Because it means that light is what will do the overcoming. Of everything. It means that, despite its power, darkness will never, actually, truly win. Sure, darkness can toy with us. Darkness can drive us to places that hurt us. But darkness doesn’t have any substance. Darkness is working with optics.
If we can channel hope; channel joy; master the practice of waiting until the morning; we can’t fall victim to darkness. Let us leave our worship today reflecting on the power of Jesus’s light and singing some other words familiar to us. Words from the classic Gospel hymn: “We shall be alright/We shall live in peace/We are not afraid/Oh deep in my heart I do believe/We shall overcome someday.”
