The week before Christmas - the last week of Advent - has few rivals for demands of attention, time and detail from the participants in the first two seasons of the historic liturgical calendar.

Mixed with the necessity of gift buying and preparations for traditional gatherings, family feasts, and for the observant, plans for religious services, the week becomes a blur with competing interests.

The loss of focus with the time around us may be the reason many people who observe the winter religious holidays look into history for clarity and definition.

Looking back over hundreds or even thousands of years creates the perception that times were simpler, motives purer, and answers sought for the moral core, more certain.

Lifted out of context and read in isolation from their times the wisdom of the sages and the ages certainly seems distanced from all the stresses and problems of 21st century life.

However, closer examination usually reveals eloquent prayers for insight and light because of problems - personal and cultural - that beset forebears in faith.

Sometime in the 10th century - the 900s of what's called the Common Era - a poet whose identity is lost to history wrote meditations that, a century later, became part of the collection at Exeter Cathedral, and it's called "The Exeter Book."

Its passionate prayers reflect the uncertainties, problems and general conditions of the Early Middle Ages. The world was, by 21st century standards, hopelessly primitive, dangerous and dark.

The longing for light - inner illumination - is the common link from them to us.

"Now, we sit in darkness, grieving over the wrongs we have committed," the poet wrote. "We long for the sun, we yearn for the warmth and brightness of your truth. Open the gate of this prison and lead us into your kingdom, which is our true home.

"Come now, high king of heaven. Come to us in flesh and bone. Bring life to us who are weary and with misery. Bring peace to us who are overcome with weeping, whose cheeks are covered with bitter salt tears. Seek us out who are lost in the darkness of depression. Do not forget us, but show mercy on us. Impart to us your everlasting joy, so that we, who are fashioned by your hands, may praise your glory."

People of faith - and people seeking hope in faith - have used similar words with identical meanings for 2,000 years. Light is both internal substance and external symbol.

Shedding light on problems and situations helps people find hope, find solutions.

The scriptural tradition on which prayers in the 10th century and the 21st century are made doesn't promise ease; it promises hope in struggle.

The soaring, poetic and mystical words of the Gospel of John perhaps capture most succinctly and memorably what the light is: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

The light may start as a glimmer, but it is sufficient to find the way for those who seek.