-Picture the night horizon lit by fire. The distance flares and glows with orange and red and yellow, and all around it is black. This is where we stand, on a low ridge facing the North, where the flames rage and broil. Behind us is a world that we barely understand, but that we cling to with every beat of our hearts and breath of our lungs. Beyond the fire is nothing, and the fire is creeping our way.
-All around the city now it is cold, for we are once more in a familiar place at a familiar time. The sky is a flat gray that looks cold, if ever something could. The city is filled with people who never look up, and filled with a longing for a hope that has come, and waits on them if only they could find it. This time is advent, and Christmas is approaching.
-There is an obsession with light, and we see it all around us in the strands of white and color that hang from trees and houses, filling windows and adorning hearths. The lights are bright, and bring us near them with a beauty that attracts and comforts. Yet the lights are electric, and as cold as the day’s unwelcoming sky.
-We wait, for we know that soon the lights will fail, and the sky will darken, and the fires will begin. We will call it the Apocalypse.
-There is an old man with us, who carries with him words that are scrawled in mud upon ragged bits of cloth. We are in the city, but it is no longer familiar and the time is no longer known. The old man reads to us every night from the words he carries, and we try to remember in our hearts.
-‘There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and life up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’
-This is the story we tell now at Christmas, and we hold our heads in our hands as we search the skies for our redemption...and all the while long for the electric lights of our past--though we have forgotten that they were cold.
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