The gap between the Year Past and the New Year is paper-thin. Some of us recognise it perhaps with a party, or a family tradition. But these ways of marking the change can feel like we’re trying to make it more real than it actually is. After all, the relentless normalities of life continue on, bodies need to be fed, clothes washed; the sun rises: Nature unconcerned with our timekeeping.
Or think of another new beginning. Think perhaps of that moment during a coronation when the shout rings out in the hall – “The King is dead, long live the King!” Here the change is not instantaneous, there is the briefest pause as the syllables are formed, space in time when there is not a king, and yet must be one.
The Bible gives us a metaphor to teach us how to live in the time that God has put us in. It uses the image of a slow-rising dawn; picturing humanity as the inhabitants of a dark land waiting for the dawn and the eventual daybreak.
This is why Jesus is called the “Morning Star”, the “Dayspring”. He has come into our world of darkness, and his coming has brought the first thin rays of light into our world. His coming hasn’t dispelled all the shadows, the world around us is in that early-morning half light. But his coming brings the certainty that the darkness is fleeing, that the full zenith of his second coming will destroy the darkness and bring our world into glorious colour and focus.
Aside from the beauty of this image, I think there are three ways that God intends us to be guided by this picture: Firstly we can know that the darkness is fleeing! As surely as the morning follows the dawn, so surely will Christ return to us. Secondly, it is this darkness that Christ entered. Knowingly and willingly he came into a broken world of unseen pitfalls, of subterfuge, of uncertainty and danger for our sakes. Finally, we need to be reminded that Heaven is the full day! Compared to our world now it is clearer, brighter, safer and infinitely more certain.
And so how do we live? We live with hope, we live with expectancy, we live watching the rays of light break in over the hilltops, watching Christ build his kingdom amongst us. Trusting that when Christ returns in glory, the world will take on colour and shape, that safety and warmth will dispel the darkness.
Proverbs 1:18, 2 Peter 1:19, Isaiah 9:2, Revelation 21:23, 22:16
By Sam Allen
