Few writers can communicate the wonder of God’s Word as deeply as Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. For more than sixty years, she has been on a lifelong quest to know and love Jesus more deeply and has never gotten over the wonder of who He is. She finds great joy in making Him known to others, whether she’s speaking from a platform or standing in a grocery aisle. In Nancy’s new advent devotional, Born a Child and Yet a King, she invites us to listen closely to the familiar songs heard everywhere this Christmas season. They are telling a story, the story of Jesus—who He is and why He came. What a joy to welcome Nancy back to the farm’s front porch today…

Guest Post by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

_{Adapted from Nancy’s book, “Born a Child and Yet a King”}

I’ve always found it worthy of note that God’s Son arrived on the earth without much of a splash. No first-century version of a media blitz. No big publicity campaign. The choir of angels was, of course, a spectacular touch, yet God confined its audience to only a handful of shepherds. To almost everyone else, Jesus slipped into the world unannounced.

No fanfare. No light show.

Simply a dawning. The Dayspring, as we sing in a traditional carol that can be traced back to the 800s AD:

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by Thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight.

I believe we should think of Christmas like that—like a sunrise.

Yes, the last vestiges of night remain visible, even seeming to dominate the opposite horizon, and yet they’re clearly in process of fading, of being pushed aside, their “dark shadows put to flight.”

Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, employed this same word picture in his reverie concerning the son that God had promised to him and his wife in their old age. John, he said, would be tasked with proclaiming to his generation that “the Dayspring from on high has visited us” (Luke 1:78), that the seemingly indelible stain of darkness that colored the world would soon be exposed as limited, vulnerable, impermanent.

Breakable. By the Daybreak.

The Dayspring’s visitation, Zechariah said, is meant

“To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (v. 79)

“We for whom the darkness is dissipating have cause above all others to be cheerful.”

And His coming, the ancient carol reminds us, is cause for cheer.

We for whom the darkness is dissipating have cause above all others to be cheerful.

Now that the “sun of righteousness” has arisen before us “with healing in its wings,” we’re even rousingly invited to “go out leaping like calves from the stall” (Mal. 4:2).

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” We hear in the carol’s darker keys the pangs of desperation.

And yet because our God has responded to this cry with the sunrise promise of His advent, we live today as “children of light” (Eph. 5:8). 

Emmanuel, as Matthew notated in his Gospel account, means “God with us” (Matt. 1:23), hearkening back to the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). (The slight spelling difference here has to do with transcribing the original Hebrew and Greek.)

God with us, not just over and above us.

“God with us, not off at a distance, forever beyond us. God with us, not just over and above us.”

God with us, not off at a distance, forever beyond us.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel.

This is a hymn of longing—of Israel’s longing for their Messiah, for a rescuer, for a deliverer who would come and set them free. They longed to be back in their homeland, back to their temple, back to the things they’d taken for granted during those years when God had pleaded with them to return to Him, warning them of what their continual compromises with evil and idolatry would surely cost.

We sing His name—Emmanuel—because of how we ourselves came to this earth, not with sins that we could learn to overcome if we worked hard enough, but with sins that had already defeated us, destroyed us, doomed us. And this is how we would die—in eternal captivity—if not for “God with us.” 

If not for the coming of Emmanuel. 

If not for Christmas. 

And even when our life’s journey takes us through periods of darkness, we can still walk forward into “the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” (Prov. 4:18)

For though Christmas is like a sunrise, it does not presage a coming sunset. This earthbound life we live is leading us to a heavenly high noon.

And how can we not be cheerful as we contemplate the joy of that day?

How grateful I am, Father, that the cheer You provide is neither superficial nor unsustainable. You have placed inside us the hopefulness of a new morning now that Your Son has dawned in our hearts and promised an end to our darkness. Make me a beacon of this light so that every place I go, others will see Your brightness shining.

[ Our humble thanks to Moody for their humble partnership in today’s devotional. ]