Into The Light
My wife always looks forward to going back to work at a local, Christian school. This means she sets her alarm clock to wake us up each weekday morning. As the school year progresses through the fall, we can’t help but notice how much chillier and darker it becomes each morning. We find ourselves waking up in what seems like the middle of the night rather than the early morning.
Like it or not, autumn is the first sign of the approaching dark and cold of the winter months.
Naturally, we try to avoid the dark since darkness wraps us up in a disorienting blindness. We can’t tell exactly where we are or where we are going without a source of light to help us.
Since the fall of humanity, we have all been wrapped in a spiritual form of darkness causing us to wander away from the One who created us. We have become spiritually disoriented, groping our way through life, tripping over our own foolishness, becoming more lost with every step we take.
I once heard it put this way: fallen humanity is like a blind man in a darkened, windowless room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.
But God’s word reminds us the darkness has been shattered by a bright and shining light.
For Christians, autumn has become, not a darkening room, but a gateway to a day that celebrates the Light of the World coming into our lives to give us abundant and everlasting life. In the Gospel of Luke, we’re reminded of Isaiah’s prophecy regarding Jesus’ coming into the world: “…the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the shadow of death a light has dawned,” Matthew 4:16.
Right smack-dab in the middle of the year’s darkest days, we remember that Christ has come, as we sing:
Hail! the heaven-born Prince of peace!
Hail! the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die:
Born to raise the son of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new-born King !”
So, let the cold and shadows of life’s autumn come. They’ve all been driven away by the light of Christ.
