Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood Monk in Docks.
Welcome to day 21 of Advent 2025,
Waiting with Matthew.
Today we'll take some time to reflect on Matthew chapter 4 verse 16,
Where Matthew writes,
As the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
And for those who sat in the region and shadow of death,
Light has dawned.
As we come to begin,
Let's just settle ourselves and be still,
To breathe deeply,
To make this space a space to be receptive.
As we ask God to open our ears,
Our minds and our hearts to our reflection today.
There's a detail in Matthew 4.
16 that's easy to miss.
It's a quiet detail,
A human detail.
Matthew doesn't say,
The people who walked in darkness.
He says,
The people who sat in darkness.
To sit is to stop,
To be without direction,
To feel unable to move,
To be held still by something larger than you,
Grief,
Confusion,
Exhaustion,
Fear.
This is not the darkness you pass through.
This is the darkness that settles on you and doesn't let you rise.
Now Matthew's quoting Isaiah 9,
The great Advent prophecy.
In Isaiah,
God promises light to a people who have lost their way,
To a people crushed by oppression,
Uncertainty and despair.
And Matthew says,
That promise is now.
That light has arrived.
The dawn has begun.
But notice again,
The people are sitting.
And so the light doesn't wait for them to find their way out.
The light comes to them in their stillness,
Into their immobility,
Into their heaviness.
In Advent,
We often think that our waiting should be active,
Lighting candles,
Praying,
Preparing,
Yearning forward,
But today's verse reminds us there are seasons when waiting feels like sitting in the dark because you just don't know what to do next.
And Advent tells us that space and that place is still holy ground.
For light comes precisely to those who cannot move.
And then Matthew deepens the verse,
For those who sat in the region and shadow of death.
This isn't metaphorical melancholy.
This is the shadow that falls on nations,
On families,
On hearts.
The shadow that descends when something breaks in your life and you know that it can't go back to what it was.
The Greek words for shadow of death,
Asceia thanatou,
And they evoke an engulfing darkness,
Something like standing in the eclipse of hope.
And Matthew places Jesus deliberately there in that geography,
That spiritual landscape.
Jesus begins his ministry not in Jerusalem,
Not in the place where religion is alive and confident,
But in the margins,
In Galilee of the Gentiles,
A borderland,
A mixed,
Uncertain,
And very fragile place.
He begins in a place where identity is unsettled,
Where suffering is very present,
Where people feel forgotten.
This,
This is where light dawns.
The light doesn't wait for religious readiness.
The light doesn't wait for clarity or certainty.
The light doesn't wait for you to be strong or spiritual or steady.
The light comes to the forgotten edges of your life,
To the shadowed places that you'd rather ignore,
To the heaviness that you carry quietly and often alone.
And then Matthew says,
Light has dawned.
Notice the light doesn't explode or over the whelm or,
Or force anything.
Dawn begins with a pale shift in the horizon,
A whisper of brightness,
A line no wider than a breath.
Advent light,
My friends,
Is always dawning,
Slow,
Gentle,
Patient.
It grows in degrees.
It honors your depth and your humanity and your pace.
God doesn't rush the morning.
And likewise,
God doesn't rush you.
And sometimes the light we receive in Advent isn't the light that solves anything immediately.
It's simply the light that says,
You're not alone.
You're not abandoned.
Morning has already begun,
Even if you can't yet see the sun itself.
And that is enough.
That's salvation in seed form.
This is hope in its first language.
Now there's a strange kind of courage in sitting.
Because in sitting,
You're not pretending you're stronger than you are.
You're letting yourself be exactly where you are without spiritual makeup,
With no emotional armor.
And Advent gives us permission to recognize the darkness honestly,
Without fearing that it will swallow us up.
Because light has already entered.
The dawn is already rising.
Your job isn't to create the light.
Your job isn't to force a sunrise by the strength of your will.
Your job is to simply sit,
Awake,
Open,
Honest,
And allow the light to find you.
This is what it means to wait for light.
It's less about searching and more about receiving.
Less about striving and more about softening.
It's less about managing life and more about trusting the slow,
Steady,
Tender dawn of God.
I invite you in this moment just to take a deep breath.
And another.
And if you're holding a place of darkness in your life right now,
Feel no pressure to fix it in this moment.
Instead,
Imagine yourself sitting,
As Matthew says,
In the shadow.
And see Christ walking towards you with no urgency,
No judgment,
But with a gentleness.
A gentleness that doesn't intimidate the darkness,
But transforms it.
Let the light find you today.
I wonder if you'll join me in prayer.
God of dawning light,
You enter the places where we sit in darkness and you don't ask us to stand before you shine.
You come into our shadows,
Into the regions where hope feels thin,
And you bring the slow,
Steady mercy of morning.
Teach us to trust the dawn.
To believe in brightness even before it becomes clear.
To receive the small,
Soft ways you illuminate our days.
Let your light touch our fear,
Our grief,
Our exhaustion,
And lift us gently into hope.
Come,
Light of the world.
Come into our waiting.
Come into our stillness.
Come into our night.
And let your dawn rise in us.
Amen.
And so,
My friends,
As you go into the remainder of your day,
May you discover that even in the shadows,
God is already shining on the horizon.
May the light that dawns slowly be enough to steady your heart for the day ahead.
And may you trust that Christ always comes,
Not to the perfect,
But to those who sit and wait in the dark.
And may grace,
Peace,
And love be with you right where you are today and every day.
Until tomorrow,
My friends,
Grace and peace be with you.
