Into a land walking in deep darkness, Isaiah announces a birth: unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.

You have heard these words in December, wrapped in candlelight. Today, hear them where they were first spoken, in wartime, to terrified people. That is where they do their best work.

Isaiah's Christmas verse was a war bulletin. Assyria was rising, kings were trembling, and the promise was not that darkness would be explained but that a Child would outrank it, government on his shoulders, peace without end. Hope, in the Bible, is always announced from inside the dark.

Paul's thorn belongs to the same announcement. The removal he begged for never came; the sufficiency did. Grace does not always change the circumstance. It changes the load-bearing wall. Whatever darkness you are walking through, the Child has been born into exactly that kind of night.