Scripture Reflections

I was given an amazing gift a few weeks ago. I was walking our puppy and came to a favorite spot where you can see out over the rooftops of Shymkent to the mountains in the east. When I arrived, the light of the rising sun was just appearing over the mountains, and as I watched, the sun in all its glory rose from behind their peaks. It was awesome, and completely unexpected. The Lord had ushered me into my spot just in time to view this glory of his making. Since that morning I have been in my spot in time for the sunrise most days, but sometimes it’s only by the lightening of the sky and the testimony of the birds that I can tell the sun is rising, its face and brilliance being hidden by clouds, even “thick darkness” as described in Isaiah 60:2. As Annie Dilliard has famously said in Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.” 
 
The 25th of December until January 5th are, in our church calendar, the 12 days of Christmas which lead up to Epiphany on January 6th. These days of feasting and celebration are a gift, an opportunity to prepare--though in a different way than during Advent--for the second coming of our Lord. After all, the first thing he has planned for us in the new heavens and the new earth is a huge feast, the wedding supper of the Lamb (Revelations 19:6-9)! And more than feasting, when our Lord comes in his glory, he will come to be with us, even as he came at Christmas as Emmanuel, God with us. In a sermon from the beginning of Advent, Steven+ made a passing reference to the “third advent”: Christ has come, Christ will come again -- and daily, Christ comes to us. In her book Sacred Seasons, Danielle Hitchin says, “In acknowledging that Jesus has already come and will come again, his coming is made present in our own lives.” Celebrating Christmas through these last 4 days or so could mean putting off that New Year’s diet and keeping up your tree until after Epiphany; it is a great time to invite neighbors over to help you finish the Christmas cookies and candy and sing a few carols together—have you sung “Go Tell It on the Mountains” yet?? But more than anything else, I hope it is a time to remember and even, as in the beam of the rising sun, bask in his presence with you. He truly delights in you, even rejoices over you (Isaiah 60:4-5).
 
In this dark midwinter time, even though it may be hidden by clouds, the sun is rising every morning. In your life, as in mine, our Savior is also shining on us day by day, even when the darkness of this world or of our own hearts makes it hard to see him. As we heard from the reading of John 1 this past Sunday, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This is our hope, as it is the hope of the whole world! How can we put ourselves in the way of his light today? We can be in Scripture and in prayer, and we can come together with the saints to worship on our Lord’s Day. There is still one more Sunday of Christmas! Come fellowship, and be encouraged.  
 
“‘Awake, O sleeper, 
      and arise from the dead,
  and Christ will shine on you.’”
(Ephesians 5:14)
 

Hannah