The Miracle of Light: Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples
by Donna Bucher
The Miracle of Light:
Finding Advent Hope for Our Broken Temples
by Donna Bucher
“May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien
Not too long ago, amid the gentle light of the Advent candles, I found myself aching with remembrance. Sorrow from years of grief called forth by the light limned the halls of my memory with a cold shame I could not shake. Instead of basking in the joy we often expect to feel during the Christmas season, I grieved the ruins of my life—my heart gripped by lament—wondering if God’s promised Light could ever restore the desolation.
In this space, God reminded me of the miracle of light sent to his people before the coming of the True Light we celebrate at Advent, a miracle that met God’s people in the ruins, just as it would meet me many years later.
This biblical desecration forced a lament that broke forth from the depths of sorrow buried deep for long years of oppression and bondage. Robbed of their culture and religious practices under Antiochus IV and the Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE, Jews in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea grieved the ruin of their Temple.
Can you imagine the sort of grief they must have felt, as they watched everything they knew and loved crumble at an enemy's hand?
After the ultimate blasphemy of sacrificing swine upon Yahweh’s sacred altar, the Maccabean priests rose up in rebellion, winning a supernatural victory over Antiochus Epiphanes and recaptured the Temple. Despite the knowledge of the Temple sacrilege over the course of its Gentile occupation, nothing prepared the priests for the reality of the malevolence awaiting them upon re-entry to the Temple.
The brutality that ravished, defiled, and polluted the Temple defied words.
Entering what once housed the glory of God, the forbidding darkness mocked their victory with its unrelenting shroud of despair and utter emptiness. The lampstand, which stood perpetually burning, now sat extinguished as a testimony of evil’s victory.
The purpose of the lampstand, as given to Aaron in Numbers 8:1-4 and Leviticus 24:5-9, was to shine upon the table of shewbread, where twelve loaves rested representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Just as light and fire symbolized the life-giving presence of God (Exodus 12:21-22), so the lampstand represented the presence of God and his glory shining upon the twelve tribes of Israel.
This wasn’t just some ordinary light; rather, it was the Light.
To the Maccabean priests, the darkened lampstand spoke louder than the absence of light; it testified of the dearth of God’s presence and the departure of his glory from Israel. As the primary focus of their restoration and purification of the Temple, lighting the lampstand became paramount.
However, they found only enough consecrated oil to burn the lampstand for one night.
Though they knew it would take eight days to make and consecrate more oil, they lit the lampstand to represent God’s life-giving presence once again in the Temple. This is when the miracle happened. Despite their lack, God stepped in with his abundance and allowed the lampstand to burn unabated for the full eight days until fresh oil could maintain it, according to his instruction to Aaron.
This is the miracle of what the Jewish people called the Feast of Dedication during the time of Jesus Christ’s birth, life, and death (John 10:22-23). It represents the recapturing, restoring, and re-dedication of the Temple and the people after the Seleucid domination. Today it is known as Chanukah or the Festival of Lights, though many still refer to it as the Feast of Dedication.
This was a true light birthed from darkness kind of story. And as I ponder Advent, I realize the nativity story mirrors the miracle of the lampstand. Under yet another repressive empire and the tyrannical hopelessness of sin, God’s people sat in despair and under the shadow of death, desperate for light and longing for the promised Messiah (Isaiah 9:2).
One of subjugation, desolation, and sorrow, the story of God’s chosen people chronicled both times of God’s rich blessings and those of persecution and captivity due to disobedience. But God promised through the prophet Jeremiah, that he had good plans for the nation of Israel– plans to prosper them, giving hope and a future when he returned their captivity (Jeremiah 29:11).
The Maccabean rebellion and the miracle of the lampstand occurred during the four-hundred years of silence between when the prophet Malachi spoke and the birth of Christ. I wonder if God’s people realized the significance of the miracle of light they witnessed so close to the birth of the true Light.
My life is the story of the ravished, defiled, and broken temple. Others stole my innocence, wounded me, and left me in the despondency of shame. Sin ravaged my purity, broke me, and separated me from God.
Even after becoming a Christian, I struggled with the overwhelming gloom of feeling isolated from God. Fearing the exposure of my true desolation, the lie of the darkness pushed me to cover my wounds, keeping the light out, lest God see my shame.
Yet the lampstand—for God’s chosen people and me—illuminated the Temple in all its horror, and as the light burned, the Temple was cleansed and restored. Advent invites us to a posture of welcoming Jesus, the Light of the world–even into our ruins (John 12:46).
Like the lampstand, Jesus is the life-giving presence of God, in whom there is no darkness (1 John 1:5) and who casts out all darkness. In Jesus there is life, and that life is the Light of all men (John 1:5).
Though we may sit in the dark places of grief, brokenness, and even sin, inviting the Light to shine one day at a time begins the healing. As his beloved children, the weapons of evil find only defeat in our lives.
We can offer up our broken temples for his Light. God sits with us in the blackened ruins. He sits with us in the shadows where the death of hopes, dreams, relationships, and even the life we once thought possible lay desolate–illuminating bleak corners and dead places with the Light of his hope.
Light stepped into the darkened, ravaged temple of my life, bringing the life-giving presence of God into the ruins, in the same way we celebrate the Advent of the birth of Jesus in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4-5), enlightening a world tarnished by sin, brokenness, and evil. Like the stars, the light shines most brilliantly in the deepest, blackest night, for even darkness is light to God (Psalm 139:11-12). When we feel imprisoned by desolation, our hope lies not in fearing the light’s shining in the ruins, but in the embrace of the Light, which casts out all darkness.
The miracle of light in the lampstand of the Temple foreshadowed the greatest miracle of all time: the virgin birth of the One True Light we celebrate during Advent and Christmas—the Light no darkness, evil, sin, or death would ever defeat.
This Advent, may we welcome the Light into our lonely places of grief, uncertainty, suffering, and shame. May we experience the miracle of God’s Light in Jesus Christ, and may our wounds and brokenness be the clay jars with which we hold the treasure of God’s light. May his Light shine out into the darkness of the world around us, proclaiming the life-giving, life-altering presence of Immanuel.
A Poem for Your Darkness:
May my poem—penned as darkness birthed the miracle of Light from my desolate ruins—breathe the hope of Immanuel into your sorrowful places this Advent season. He can make your broken temple whole.
Hope Comes in the Light
by Donna Bucher
Enveloped in utter darkness,
bound in pain and grief,
I feel my way forward —
crawling toward the Hope
held in the whisper
of Your voice.
Longing for light,
I swallow darkness.
Though the blackest night
obscures my path,
faith follows Your voice
into the Light, which
no darkness quenches —
where Hope collects my tears.
Art: from Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence, by Caravaggio, 1609
DONNA BUCHER
Donna is a passionate creative, writer, poet, speaker, retired missionary, CASA volunteer, experienced counselor and hospice and palliative care support personnel. She is the founder of Serenity in Suffering blog and author of the Serenity in Suffering newsletter on Substack, where she shares articles, resources, and counseling designed to help readers grow personally and find spiritual intimacy with Christ. Her hope is they ultimately find purpose in the trials they face. Her writing has appeared in various online sites, literary journals, digital and print magazines, and devotional journals.