There is a massive difference between people who make decisions to do things and people who actually do them. The incredible difference boils down to action. This is where step four (of our step series) and Christmas collide. See, Christmas is about a God who did something. When God saw our human predicament - that our own burdens and our condition was more than we could bear... he didn't just feel bad about it. He took some action. And that action involves a baby born into a dark and fearsome world with some incredible news... the light has come and even the darkness is as light to this kind of a Saviour. No more fear. That's why I'm not scared of the dark.

This is important because we tend to sing and say a lot of weird things at Christmas time. It's like we believe if we recite hallmark greetings enough they will be true! But they aren't. Christmas is as hard a time as any - and for many people it's harder than normal. It's dark and difficult and the pressure and situations people come from and are in make it even more difficult. Add to that the pressure of a highly commercialized venture and you have the opposite of Hallmark... like a Zombie apocalypse christmas. And the thing I like about the Christmas story is... that is exactly how Jesus was born. Not on a silent night while angels sang overhead a small stable with light snow falling in the background... but most likely in fear and pain and in sorrow and in obscurity... with no where to lay his head and no one who seemed to care much except some eccentric foreigners, smelly shepherds, and a raging megalomaniac King who promptly tried to kill him and and all the babies with him. No hallmark here folks. Only darkness. Loads of it. But I'm not scared of the dark.

God takes action at just the right time. When there is no need for sentiment that wreaks of denial and well-wishes a future that most likely will never be. Christmas, like the fourth step of heaven is God's announcement to send Jesus into the world on his own personal searching moral inventory! To truly find out the human situation - to know the depths of human misery and suffering, to understand the humiliating reality of people's capacity for evil. He came as light - to witness to the light. To be the light. To spread the light. So that every dark corner could be ablaze with glory. that's why I'm not scared of the dark.

that's what step four is all about. inviting the light of the world into our darkness.... bringing every skeleton we can think of out in the beautiful light of His grace. Let the glory blaze - not on a postcard, pretending, leave it to beaver Christmas - but on my sin, darkness, neglect, willful disobedience... let God's glory blaze on the darkness of my pride and sorrow... let God's glory blaze on my megalomaniac reactions to His Kingdom... and let God's glory blaze inside of me. Every part of me. I'm not scared of the dark. The light has come indeed.