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Here’s the best one-line description of Christmas I know: 
“It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.”
I can’t remember who said that, but I know it was a child.  It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.  That’s how the Bethlehem story goes.
That’s how my story goes, too.  I have gone through times when it got darker and darker.  I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.  I had been told that God would work everything out, but it seemed like God was asleep, or hiding, or on vacation.
And then, just when I thought it was all over, something happened.  Something changed.  Something arrived.  Sometimes it was God in disguise, hiding in another human being who came to help me out.  Other times it was new strength in my heart, like a newly-risen star shining in the darkness.  And sometimes it was a still, small voice, no louder than a baby lamb next to a manger on a winter night.
It has happened again and again in my life.  It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born. 
I bet it’s happened to you.  I bet you can look back at your life and realize you’ve come through some pretty dark times, but here you are.  Something got you through – call it luck, call it grace, call it God.  You have come through.
It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.
And I’m talking about Jesus, not a Christmas card.  The great teaching of Christianity is what we celebrate at Christmas:  God became one of us.  The Word became flesh.  God came to birth.
It’s not always pretty or easy.  This Child we sing about tonight was born into poverty and homelessness.  This Child we sing about tonight was born in a country that had been invaded and conquered and ruled by foreign occupiers.  This Child we sing about tonight was a real child, eating and crying and making a mess in his swaddling clothes.  God became one of us.
It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.
Last year, on Christmas Day, my wife and I were given an amazing gift.  We had been invited to our daughter’s group home for Christmas dinner.  If you know me, you know that I have a daughter who is amazing, but also a source of grief to me.  My Marie has autism and mental deficits. 
The darkness in my own life was mostly around raising her.  My wife and I had some very dark times with Marie:  times when she was so unhappy, times when she was out of control, times when she was violent.
But in the past few years, my sweet Marie has been happier than at any other time in her life.  She has become a happy person, which is all any parent wants.
It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.
So last Christmas Day, we went to her group home for dinner.  And the staff had prepared a gift for us.  They gave us a picture.  It’s a picture of Marie.  It’s a picture of Marie on a poster.  This is it.
And it amazes me.  It captures her so perfectly.  She is a beautiful young woman, but has the shadow of disability over her life.  And this picture, taken at a Christmas tree display, shows her as she is…a person of light and shadow.
This is an icon to me.  An icon is a religious picture showing something of God.  Here’s my icon.  My sweet Marie, like the Christ Child, was born in shadow, with troubles and pain and sorrow ahead.  And yet there is so much light.
In the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel, after the shepherds come and talk about the angels, there is a line I love.  Luke’s Gospel says, “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
I do that, too.  In the life of my precious child, there is such great darkness.  But there is also vivid light.
I don’t mean just this picture.  I mean that Marie has a wisdom that can come only from God.  I mean that Marie can light up a room when she laughs.  I mean that Marie, too, is an icon, an image, of light.
It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.
You, too, have seen this.  You, too, have had darkness and then light.  You, too, have had God born in you.
God became one of us.  In a stable, in a time far away, in a dangerous country, God became one of us.  God is with us.  God is serious about knowing how it is with us.  God did this to be with us always.
The greatest thing my daughter ever said to me is what God says to us in the Christmas story, and in the entire Christmas message.  One time, when things were pretty dark with me, Marie said it.
I said, “Marie, I love you.”  She said, “I love you, too,” but she would not look at me.  People with autism, you see, are not comfortable with eye contact.  I know this.  But that night it frustrated me.  So, in exasperation, I asked, “Marie, why won’t you look me in the eye?”  Immediately, without eye contact, she said, “Because I can look you in the heart.”  It took my breath away.
“I can look you in the heart.”  That’s the woman on this religious icon, and that’s her message to me, and it’s the truth.
And that’s the God who got born on that long-ago Christmas night, and that’s God’s message to you, and it’s the truth.
No matter how dark it gets, even when you feel completely alone, when you are at the end of your rope, in Christ, God says, “I can look you in the heart.”
“I can look you in the heart.”
Emmanuel has come…God with us.
It gets darker and darker, and then….Jesus is born!


Merry Christmas!