Village Shepherd

The British weather is renowned for its diversity and therefore is always a good conversation starter. "Nice day!" we say to passing strangers in this part of rural England, whenever the sun shines. The diversity also makes it quite difficult to predict the weather, so our weather forecasts are not always entirely accurate and cannot be made more than a few days in advance. And the weather around here is remarkably local, so pouring rain in one village might be brilliant sunshine in the next village, only a mile or so away.

We recently had a very stormy night, with gale-force winds buffeting trees and houses. It was followed by an uncertain morning, where at one point the sky was an inky black, with a few drops of sleety rain just beginning to fall. But suddenly, across that dark, threatening sky, a perfect rainbow appeared. It arched high over the village, with clear, bright colours. We watched in admiration and delight -- remembering God's promise to the Ancient Israelites of old that he would never again flood the world -- but just as suddenly as it had appeared, the rainbow faded and we were back to the glowering clouds and the prospect of ominous weather.

On this occasion that prospect came to nothing, for the sky gradually cleared and before long the sun shone again and the wind dropped. But we all knew that our weather is capricious and we might have a mild day today or that the bad weather might quickly return. Nevertheless we also knew that however bad the weather became, it was most unlikely to destroy our property - or us - for although our weather is diverse and we do experience flooding disasters or wind disasters from time to time in some parts of the country, our weather isn't generally too extreme.

The cycle of human lives seems to follow weather patterns. Most of us experience periods of sunshine and for some, those periods of sunshine are like living in the South of France, with unbroken blue skies for months on end. But for others, just as they are relaxing and beginning to enjoy the sunshine, disaster strikes and there's a flood or a hurricane or a storm. For many of us these disasters are unlikely to destroy us, but there are those for who such disasters can be extreme.

There might be a rainbow somewhere in this darkness which heralds a promise of better things to come, things which sometimes materialise and sometimes fail to materialise. But on the whole, eventually things improve and we're back to sunshine, at least for a while.

How does Christianity impinge upon this scenario?

It's a pattern which has been there for all human beings for all time, although more recently we in the West may notice it particularly because we have more leisure time than ever before in which to navel-gaze. In past generations (and still in many Southern countries) life has consisted of hard work and tragedy, so few people expected anything more. Only the upper classes had sufficient leisure to indulge in an attack of the vapours. But now we do expect something more. We expect to lead satisfying lives where nothing goes wrong and we don't experience pain, and we're encouraged in such expectations by the media.

When our expectations are dashed, we tend to wonder why. Some people may feel unjustly singled out for a raw deal or punished by God for no good reason. "Why me?" and "What have I done to deserve this?" are common cries when life kicks us in the teeth.

At the beginning of our human walk with God, times of darkness were indeed seen as God's punishment for wrongdoing. For the Ancient Israelites, that punishment usually took the form of invasion and defeat by a foreign power, but there was always the hope and the promise of better times to come.

As times grew darker and more ominous, so the promise shone brighter, like a rainbow against the blackness. The first Isaiah was writing around eight centuries before Christ, when the Ancient Israelites were suffering at the unmerciful hands of the Assyrians who destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 and besieged Jerusalem in the Southern Kingdom of Judah in 701.

It's against this backdrop that Isaiah wrote the poetry that has become famous through annual carol services, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined."

It seems that God's appearance brings light in the people's darkness and this light is described in terms of those times of rejoicing that the people knew best - the celebration of a good harvest and the pride and delight of victory during war.  This rejoicing is contrasted with the present reality for the people - the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor -- but all of these symbols of oppression are broken by God.

Later Christian writers have seen in these verses a real prophecy of Jesus, the one who came with the express purpose of saving his people. And Jesus is the real light in our darkness, the true end result of the rainbow, for Jesus is still able to break the rod of oppression which brings our darkness and can still enable us to emerge from darkness into light.

For most of us in the West, darkness is no longer military oppression by a foreign power, but is more likely to be the darkness brought about by relationship breakups, redundancy, the death of a loved one, coping with serious illness, coping with addiction and so on.

The answer to all this is just the same as it was in Isaiah's day. We need to let God take over our lives and to follow his guidance in our life-style choices. Jesus came to show us exactly how to do that, so that if we really follow his lead and spend time waiting upon him, he will lead us out of darkness and into light.

And once we're in the light of God, we soon discover that whatever life throws at us, it's a light which always remains with us. Never again can the darkness overwhelm us, for the light of Christ is never extinguished.