This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. I John1:5
In CS Lewis's children's novel The Last Battle, there is a scene near the end, after Tirian and the old Kings and Queens of Narnia have triumphed in battle, where they have passed through the Stable Door and out of Narnia. To their surprise, inside the stable they find themselves in a great, bright expanse of trees, sky and meadows. Narnia has ended, and Aslan's Country is now their home. As they wander in wonder, they find a group of dwarves huddled in a circle and grumbling to one another. The dwarves, who fought against Aslan (against everyone, really), still believe that they are in the stable in Narnia, and that it is pitch black and stinking and wet.
When Tirian and the others try to convince them that they are actually in the open meadow and under the open blue sky, they refuse to believe them. Lucy tries to show them a flower to prove it, but they smell garbage. Tirian tries to physically remove one of them to help him free, but the dwarf claims he has been thrown against the wall of the stable and then runs back to the circle of dwarves. And even when Aslan himself appears and speaks to them, and offers them a feast of delicious food and goblets of wine, the dwarves hear a machine making noise to trick them, and the feast tastes only of dirty stable water and old turnips. Their response to every attempt to convince them that they are not in a dark, smelly stable, is unbelief. "You see," Aslan explains, "They have chosen cunning instead of belief." It reminds me a little of Jesus's own words, "Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light..." (John 3:19)
The world seems a bit like that stable right now, or at least that we are surrounded by dwarves. It can even be tempting to be a bit "dwarvish" ourselves at times. But we are children of light, born of God, who is light, and of Jesus, who is the light of the world. We are not dwarves stuck in a stable. We are Image Bearers waiting in this Advent season for the coming of Jesus, our Aslan, to be born into the darkness, and to shine forth his light. As John put it, "The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." (John 1:9). It's why we light the advent candles through the season of Advent, the light growing each week with every candle, as Jesus's arrival comes nearer. It's why we have a candlelight mass on Christmas Eve, filling the sanctuary with the light of the incarnate Son.
Our job during this season of Advent is, as Paul put's it, to "be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." We pay attention, watching for the light as He comes nearer each day. We love those around us, and we live in faith. And we pray, to keep our hearts and minds focused on the goal:
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.
(BCP, Collect for the Advent Season, p. 95)