Bowling Green Covenant Church

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of
the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall
cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples, but the
LORD will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon
you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the
brightness of your rising.” -Isaiah 60.1-3 [NIV]

When our daughter was three-years-old every sunset brought a
crisis of faith. Each evening Liz would fearfully announce,
“The sun is going away! The sun is going away!” And every
evening at sunset, Jill and I would reassure her, “It’s all
right. The sun is going away, but it will come back. You’ll
see. When you wake up tomorrow morning the sun will be right
here to say ‘Hello!’ You’ll see tomorrow the sun will come
back.” This conversation was repeated many times until Liz
learned that every sunset is followed by a sunrise.

There are sunsets that you can see. They take place in the
sky every night. Some sunsets take place in the human heart.
You don’t see those sunsets. You feel them. When my
grandmother passed away in July 1984 that was a sunset. The
darkness grew deeper three weeks later when my dad died
after a ten-year battle with cancer. The sun rose when
Matthew was born a year later. It rose higher when I
graduated from seminary with my mother there to see it. In
June 1987 the sun set again when my mother died from
pancreatic cancer. Six months later the sun rose again when
Liz was born. The sun set again in 1989 when Jill’s dad
passed away only to rise again when Jeffrey was born later
that year. Since then the sun has risen and set many more
times, but through it all God has been faithful. He has seen
to it that for every sunset there has been a sunrise.
.
For some people, Christmas is more about the sunset than the
sunrise. Some of us struggle with loneliness even as we are
surrounded by friends and family. Some of us nervously
scribble figures on the bottom line wondering if the flow of
red ink will ever stop. Parents struggle to balance the
desire to buy gifts for their children against the need to
watch every penny. Unmarried people awkwardly celebrate the
holiday amid questions from well-meaning relatives and
friends who ask when they will settle down. For a lot of
people, Christmas is not about the sunrise. It’s about the
sunset.

If that describes you then Isaiah the prophet has good news
for you; “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the
glory of the LORD has risen upon you.” Christmas is the time
when God reminds us that for every sunset there is a
sunrise. The birth of Jesus is the celebration of our hope
that the darkness is always broken by the dawn. At Christmas
God we rejoice in the truth that weeping may last for a
night, but joy comes in the morning. Christmas is the time
when God reminds us that for every sunset there is a
sunrise.

At Christmas God commands us to arise. Since we cannot arise
by our own power, God must help us to obey. His help comes
to us through Jesus Christ, the Word of God. At Christmas,
Jesus put on our flesh and lived among us. At Christmas God
became Man in Jesus Christ. This same Jesus is also the
Light of the world. As the light of the world Jesus breaks
into our darkness like the sunrise. Where His light touches
He draws us out of the darkness to arise and follow Him.

You think about that.
MM