Shadow and Light:
Impatient Expectation

Week 1 Devotional: Hope

By John R. Franke, DPhil, Theologian in Residence

Scripture passage: Isaiah 64:1-9

As we begin our Advent journey in faith and hope that we are walking in the right direction, from darkness into the light, we are reminded of our frailties. We are finite human beings with limited comprehension, especially when it comes to following the ways of the Lord. Like Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings, we are willing to make the journey, but we don’t know the way. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that we are clay and God is the potter. We trust in the Lord to lead us in the paths of light and deliver us from darkness when we stumble.

In reflecting on this journey in the pages of scripture, we note that it is not a path that we complete once and for all. The story of Israel in the Hebrew Bible is one of continual challenge with numerous stops and starts as the people wrestle with what it means to be God’s chosen. We see similar stories in the New Testament. These biblical stories paradigmatically anticipate the realities of the church throughout history.

For Protestants with a sense of history, we remember the city of Geneva in the sixteenth-century during the Reformation. They adopted the Latin motto, Post Tenebras Lux, from darkness into light. As the history of Geneva and the Reformation demonstrated, this movement from darkness into the light is not a onetime occurrence but rather a lifetime journey that must be understood and appropriated again and again.

Many people are surprised to learn that John Calvin, the leading figure in the reformation at Geneva, believed that true reformation was not something that could be accomplished and completed once and for all but had to be a continual concern in the context of ever-changing circumstances and situations. Indeed, Calvin remarks that those who simply affirm that which they have been taught are in danger of failing to be faithful to the will of God. Instead, the business of theology involves the constant, ongoing activity of taking that which is handed down and attempting to form and communicate it in a manner that is deemed to be best for a particular time and place.

From this perspective, the process of reformation, of moving from darkness into light, is not, and never can be, something completed once and for all. Rather, an approach to reformation that acknowledges the never ending process of moving from darkness into light will be an ongoing process that is “always reforming.”

Throughout this journey of joy and struggle, we are guided by Jesus. The angels declared that his coming would be news of great joy to all people. Through him and with him, we journey from darkness into light, again and again, in order that the peace of God might fill not only our lives but also that of our neighbors as well.