“The kingdom of God is for the gullible,” I read recently. “You enter by putting an end to all your questions.”

It is true that Jesus moved all over Judea pronouncing the reign of God and the kingdom of heaven as if it were a notion he wanted the simplest soul to get his mind around. But simplicity never seemed what crowds walked away with. With looming paradox in every statement, he made it clear that this kingdom was approaching, that it was here, that it was among us, that they needed to enter it, that they need to wait for it, that they desperately need the one who reigns within it. He insisted, the kingdom “has come near you” (Luke 10:9). Yet he pled to the Father, “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). Even in his metaphors, the contrast of so many different and dynamic realities turned the clarity of any individual picture into a great and ambiguous portrait. He assigned the kingdom imagery such as a mustard seed, a treasure in a field, a great banquet, yeast and pearls, among others.

Contrary to putting an end to one’s questions with a childish simplicity, the kingdom of God incites inquiry all the more. What is the nature of this kingdom? Can it be all of these things? Who is this messenger? And what kind of proclamation requires the herald to pour out his very life to tell it? Whatever this kingdom is, it unmistakably introduces to a world far different from the one around us, one we cannot quite get our minds around, with tensions and dynamisms reminiscent of the promise of God to answer our cries “with great and unsearchable things you do not know.”(1) But one thing it absolutely does not do is ask us to stop thinking or to stop trying to reconcile this curious kingdom Jesus describes with the curious world around us. His is certainly a kingdom that challenges any sort of thoughtless, gullible obedience, that compels not blindness or gullibility but sight. It is a kingdom with a king whose very authority exposes present obsessions as wood and reforms numbed minds with great and surprising reversals of life as a gift.

Jesus pointed crowds to a God who opens the eyes of the blind and raises the dead, who claims the last will be the first and the servant is the greatest. But lest we are tempted to leave his statements as hopeful moralisms, his proclamations did not cease with mere words. He put these claims into equally curious action, placing this kingdom before the crowds in such a way that would have absolutely stymied contemporary attempts to dismiss his life as mere religion, abstraction, gullibility, or sentimentality. Even his opposition saw him as a certain and credible threat to their own power and authority:

“Then the whole assembly rose and led Jesus off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, ‘We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.’

So Pilate asked Jesus, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’

‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied.

Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, ‘I find no basis for a charge against this man.’

But they insisted, ‘He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching.  He started in Galilee and has come all the way here…’ So with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.”(2)  The way of proclamation led to the way of the passion, the path of commotion to the path of accusation, a road strewn with signs of the authority of another kingdom to a road that demanded death and mocked a king.

It is tempting to lose sight of this revolutionary figure in the sentimentalism of Christmas manger scenes and familiar carols. And yet this is the child born into our world: one who is still subverting nations and threatening our every sense of authority. The kingdom he proclaimed in birth and in death mercifully continues to unravel our own. His is not a kingdom for the gullible, nor for the faint of heart and sight. Yet, both heart and sight he provides for the weary, taking us beyond familiar borders of the world we know to the very threshold of the good and hopeful kingdom of God, where in both our longing to see in fullness and in our relishing here and now, we discover the one who reigns.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Jeremiah 33:3.

(2) Luke 23:1-23, emphasis mine.

Those of us who make our home in the Northern Hemisphere must welcome the encroaching darkness of the winter months. At the height of winter in Kotzebue, Alaska, for example, daylight is but a mere two hours. Where I live, the light begins to recede around 4:30 PM. When the winter sun is out it simply rides the southern horizon with a distant, hazy glow.

Perhaps it seems strange to some, but I love the shorter-days and the darkening skies of winter. For me, the darkness of winter invokes nostalgia for the days of huddling around the fireplace, hot coffee, and curling up with a good book. Indeed, there are some gifts that can only be enjoyed in the darkness of winter and in this season of lessening light.

Of course, darkness and night evoke ominous images as well. Pre-Christian inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere—who did not separate natural phenomenon from their religious and spiritual understanding—saw the departing sunlight as the fleeing away of what they believed was the Sun God. Darkness indicated distance from this receding god and what followed was a loss of hope, the presence of absence and the cessation of life.(1) Like these ancient peoples, darkness often creates fear. We fear what we cannot see in the dark, and what is seen inhabits the mysterious realm of shadows. Darkness has always represented chaos, evil, and death, and therefore is rarely thought of in either romantic or nostalgic terms.

For many—even those who live in sun-filled hemispheres—the darkness of life is a daily nightmare. Despair, chronic loneliness, doubt, and isolation conspire to prevent even the dimmest light. The darkness that comes only as a visitor during the night is for many a perpetual reality. Is there any reason to hope that the light might be found even in these dark places?

It is not by accident that the season of Advent for Christians coincides with the earthly season of fading light and increasing darkness. With its focus on waiting, repentance, and longing, Christians view Advent as a season of somber reflection. Yet, even as the light recedes in winter, the season of Advent offers surprising gifts in the shorter days, in the womb of pregnant possibility, and in the often anxious anticipation that accompanies waiting in the darkness. Those pre-Christian peoples who watched their sun-god disappear found that there were gifts that could be had even in this dark season. The wheels of carts used for hauling and carrying goods, were taken off and decorated with greens and garlands. Those ordinary objects now hung on their walls as mementos of beauty and hope. Taking the wheels off of their carts meant the cessation of work and a time to watch and wait. As Gertrud Muller Nelson writes about this ancient ritual, “Slowly, slowly they wooed the sun-god back. And light followed darkness. Morning came earlier. The festivals announced the return of hope after primal darkness.”(2)

While the dark is mysterious and often ominous, it is also a place of unexpected treasures. As one author notes, “[S]pring bulbs and summer seeds come to life in the unlit places underground. Costly jewel stones lie embedded in the dark interiors of ordinary rocks. Oil, gas, and coal reserves lie far beneath the light of the earth’s surface. The dark depths of the ocean teem with life.”(3) Indeed, unique gifts from earth, sky, and sea can only be observed in the dark.

Spiritual gifts, too, often emerge out of the darkness. The writer of Genesis paints a picture of the Spirit of God hovering over the primordial chaos and the darkness that covered the surface of the deep. Out of the darkness of chaos came the light of creation. The covenant promises of God to give children and land to Abram were forged “when the sun was going down…and terror and great darkness fell upon him.” Moses received the Law in the “thick darkness where God was.” God’s abiding presence was the gift from the darkness. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, the God of Israel promises: “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.” Indeed, the long-awaited Messiah would be revealed to those “who walk in darkness” and who “live in a dark land.”(4) Unlike the sun-god of the pre-Christian understanding, the God of the biblical writers did not flee as the sun faded away, but could be found in the darkest and remotest places.

For those who dwell in the dark season of despair or discouragement, the promise of treasures of darkness may spark a light of hope. “The recovery of hope,” writes Muller Nelson, “can only be accomplished when we have had the courage to stop and wait and engage fully in the winter of our dark longing.”(5)

The hope of Advent is that God is in the darkness with us even though our experience of God may seem as clear as shifting shadow. The hope of Advent is that God’s coming near to us in the person of Jesus is not hindered by the darkness of this world or of our own lives. We may fear our dark despair hides us from God, but the treasure of God’s presence waits even there—for darkness is as light to God.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Gertrud Muller Nelson, To Dance With God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1986), 63.

(2) Ibid., 63.

(3) Sally Breedlove, Choosing Rest: Cultivating a Sunday Heart in a Monday World (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 133.

(4) Genesis 15:12; Exodus 20:21; Deuteronomy 5:22; Isaiah 45:3; Isaiah 9:2.

(5) Gertrud Muller Nelson, 63.