By Lee Downen

On Monday night, Dallas Hall Lawn was alit to the joy and wonder of those who were gathered together for Celebration of Lights.

Before the lighting, though, there was great anticipation. As we sipped hot chocolate, nurtured waning candle flames and sang songs like “Silent Night,” we longed for what was to come.

This longing within us seems to be characteristic of the holiday season. We long to be through with exams, we long to be home with loved ones and we long for a white Christmas morning when all will be made right in our lives and in the world. We know that things are not right at present, but we want to get to that place where all that is wrong will come untrue.

We put our hopes on Christmas and long to see them realized. The good news, though, as President Turner read on Monday night, is that our hope has been realized—He has come.

The story of the Bible is that our deepest longing is to know and be known by God. “For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things” (Psalm 107:9).

We were created to see and savor God, and it is in Him alone that we find life, joy, and peace.

The apostle Paul says in Romans that we are unable to enter into this relationship with the living God because we have all “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature [ourselves] rather than the Creator.” Because of our sin, that is, our active, glad-hearted rebellion against a holy God, we are all cut off from God, under His wrath and without hope in ourselves.

“But God, being rich in mercy,” sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world some two thousand years ago “to seek and to save the lost.”

Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

The implication is that there is existence but there is no such thing as life outside of Him.

Jesus calls sinners to “repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).

He calls us to turn from our sin and believe that He—He who lived a perfect life, died a sinless death, and rose to victorious life—can reconcile us to God. “He became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus Christ is the ultimate joy and ultimate wonder of all of life. He is the light, the one true light, through whom we can know the Father of lights, God. He is the one whom we long for, and He has come and He will return.