The First Light of Hope
Dr Justine Toh opens our Advent 2025 series with a reflection on the way love breaks through, just as light breaks through the darkness.
REV GLEN SPENCER
For our twentieth Advent 2025 devotional, Glen Spencer reminds us that, like John the Baptist, we are called not to be the light, but to bear witness to it - through solidarity, humility, and shared liberation.
A Witness to the Light
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-14
What a brilliant passage! These opening words of John’s Gospel brim with mystery and hope. Here we meet the eternal Word, spoken before time itself, through whom all things came into being. Light shines in the darkness, life pulses through creation, and grace and truth take flesh among us.
In the context of this beautiful description of God incarnate, comes a little reference to John the Baptist. Somewhat unexpectedly, it was this phrase that really grabbed my attention as I sat with this passage for Advent: “He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.”
There is something wonderfully grounding and humbling in this idea. We are not the light.
At the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, Lilla Watson a strong Gangulu woman and Aboriginal activist stood before a crowd of over 3,000 people and delivered the following words:
“If you’ve come here because you want to help women or because you want to help people of colour or you want to help Indigenous people, pack up your bags and go home. We have nothing to do together.”’
The room became deadly silent and she repeated it.
She let the silence hang there for a long time.
Then she said: ‘But if you’ve come here because you understand that your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.’
These words (or versions of them) have inspired and challenged many who work in advocacy and social justice movements and are a powerful reminder that our work for justice and social change must be grounded in our shared humanity, mutual respect and a profound resistance of ‘savourism.’
‘Pack your bags and go home’ might hit a little hard – especially for those who really want to show up in ways that make a difference in working towards a more just a flourishing world. But we need to hear them in order to accept the gracious invitation to work together for real change, recognising we all need liberation from the de-humanising systems of this world. We are all in need of grace and truth.
This requires a genuine shift in posture and fundamentally changes the way we engage with issues of justice. Our activism flows from a different place, not of helping the other but of solidarity, not of speaking for but of listening to and working with others for change. And in doing so bear witness to the One who is the light.
As we sit with this passage, may it tenderly unsettle us and move us out from the centre and towards nurturing relationships with those who are marginalised by unjust systems, learning and working together for real change.
Love breaks through in the wonder of the incarnation. The true light that gives light to everyone dwells among us. What a privilege to bear witness to profound reality.
*Note: Lilla Watson has said of this quote that she was "not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process" and prefers that it be credited to "Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s."
Rev Glen Spencer is the Director of Mission for the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT. Glen leads a diverse collective of teams committed to working across and beyond the Uniting Church in areas of Intercultural Ministry, Climate action, Walking Together with First Peoples, Growth & Innovation, Rural Ministry and Children, Youth & Families. He has also served as the Manager at HopeStreet Woolloomooloo – leading a team committed to contributing to a healthy, integrated and empowered local community in the inner city.
This devotional is the twentieth in a series of daily email devotionals for Advent 2025 reflecting on the realities of our broken world along with the unshakable hope that love still breaks through. It explores how God’s love disrupts, heals, and transforms - breaking through darkness, despair, and injustice to bring light, joy, and renewal.
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Common Grace is a diverse movement of individuals, churches and communities passionate about Jesus and justice. We have come together as those from different Christian traditions who stand in the continuity of the historic Christian faith, centred on the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as witnessed to in holy scripture. This series highlights the diversity of followers of Jesus across these lands. These voices may not agree with one another (or with you), but they are each an expression of longing for the God whose love we see break through in Jesus.
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