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Hi, my name is Wayne Johnston and I want to share a word for 2024.

In November, with Christmas around the corner, I started sending Christmas cards to friends and family as I do every year.

But this year as I started to write them, after musing on the dark crazy state of the world, the cards took on a prophetic edge.

As I was writing, I started to write pretty much the same thing in every card, basically wise men sought the light. They sought the star to the Messiah, and today in this world, this dark world, we have to go back to the same thing.

We have to look at that star, focus on his light, and follow that through the darkness.

We read in the book of Isaiah:

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
² For behold, the darkness shall come upon the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1-2 NKJV)

To begin with, I want to focus on verse 2.

The prophet talks about deep and gross darkness covering the earth.

Sounds really exciting.

Deep means gloom or gross, thick dark clouds. Just think about the tornado type of weather.

Darkness refers to: ‘wickedness, misery, destruction and death, sorrow, ignorance (figuratively or literally).’

So basically, deep dark thick clouds of destruction, death, and gloom. All that fun stuff, but that is the state of the world.

That is how it was in Christ’s time, and it is today and I get it is not a pretty picture, but Isaiah describes our day and our misery pretty well.

So let us end with verse one.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come.“

Arise in Hebrew is the word ‘koom’. It is a prime root meaning, ‘to get up, to rise up, abide, accomplish, make good, make clear, confirm.’

It is almost like the military term, ‘stand to attention.’

And shine, meaning ‘to make or set on fire.’ 

Our light is here, so believers need to stand to attention and be set on fire by Jesus because a dark world needs a light to find its way.