December 13, 2007

Christmas Dawn

It’s 6:20AM. Our new home has a commanding vista of the Long Beach bay. My study is on the second floor.

One of my favorite things is to arise in the cold, darkness of night, and then watch as the slivers of red, pink, and purple begin to slowly pierce the canvas of black.

The water catches the luminescent paint of my Master the Artist and magnifies the majestic display into a breathtaking masterpiece of light.

The advance of the colorful light is unstoppable. The darkness has no power to restrain the conquest of light. Creation begins to laugh again. The great light has dawned and triumphed once again. Each sunrise is a replay of Christmas morning.

My Master, the Poet, writes of this victory in Matthew 4:16…“the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

Einstein said that he was able to develop the theory of relativity because of the constancy, the reliability of the one factor: the speed of light.

Each morning my life is recalibrated to the reliability of light. My darkness is defeated by light. No matter how long the night, nor how strong the inky blackness, Christ arises again to spread his colorful light display across the canvas of my life.

The prophet Malachi sings to me of the dawn. Malachi 4:2 “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.”

Each dawn brings His healing to me. The fresh sunrise of his love begins to warm the frozen corners of my heart. The faithful mercy of his love as demonstrated in the dawn empower me to release hurts and cover offenses with grace.

Each fresh sunrise should make me feel like a young calf who has been kept in the small confines of a stall during the night. With the sunrise the farmer opens the gate and the calf, with his youthful exuberance and fresh excitement at the coming day, leaps from the stall to kick up his heels in the grass.

The real Christmas is the sunrise of human history and of my daily story.

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