The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
3 You have enlarged the nation
and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest,
Isaiah 9:2-3a
At my desk sit two little yellow rubber ducks. One is clean and looks like new. The other is scuffed and worn and has been marked up by one of my children. Their contrast is obvious. I use them as a visual aid when asking children to describe to me their consolations and their desolations. These two little ducks are my “par-a-ducks,” reminders to me that two seemingly contradictory realities can be true at the same time-the definition of “paradox.”
Sometimes it’s the very things that cause us the most pain and discomfort-the things we fight so hard against-that are the greatest gifts. In the book Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, authors Yancy and Brand write of how the disease of leprosy kill the nerves that cause pain which contributes to the further destruction of the body. The pain of a blister causes us to shift our weight and avoid further damage to a sensitive area of our foot when walking. A victim of leprosy would walk on that sensitive point without any pain until it becomes an open wound vulnerable to infection and, eventually, at risk for amputation. Pain, something we so desperately avoid and medicate against, is the greatest gift to the victim struggling with leprosy.
In Song of Songs chapter 5 we read of the beloved rushing to the door, hands dripping with myrrh, anticipating her lover on the other side, only to discover that he had gone. She went out into the night to find him and in her quest, she underwent the great pains-beatings, rejection and loneliness. In her despair, she had the courage to praise her lover’s virtues instead of mask her pain with anger or bitterness. In the next chapter, though she was suffering, she spoke of the joy and affection she felt at the thought of her lover. It was there, in her moment of adoration against all hope, that he returned to her.
We see here someone who was willing not to hide from her pain but embraced it. She longed for her lover and experienced tremendous disappointment when he did not live up to her expectations. But two realities do exist at the same time-consolation and desolation, joy and pain. She chose to live in the tension between the two and was rewarded for it by not only being reunited with her lover but by being praised by him for her faithfulness.
In the midst of our darkness, can we trust that God arrives in the least likely place in our lives? In this season of advent, can I trust in the paradox that my pain could be my greatest gift? I live in that paradox where my deepest yearnings hope for Him while my pain doubts. We have that promise in the Incarnation. The Light of God entered into the darkness of our world and established His kingdom. John 1:5, 14b reads, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… and has made His dwelling among us.”
Praise be to God who arrives in the least likely places of our lives, who makes His home and establishes His kingdom within us and gives us the grace to live in the tension of consolation and desolation, joy and pain, hope for a future kingdom and the reality of a present kingdom.