It is the season after the Epiphany, and, in meditating on Christ as the Light of the World, I sense a burden to pray for courage for those who find the light dawning upon areas of darkness they have long ignored. We can so often close our eyes to the darkness around us, find a comfortable place to settle down and sleep. We tell ourselves that all is well and that there’s no need for concern even as the shadows are lengthening and evil is encroaching all around. Before we realize what has happened, we aren’t sure anymore quite where we are or how we got so lost in the night.
Read Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the opening of Isaiah 60:
Get out of bed, Jerusalem!
Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight.
GOD’s bright glory has risen for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
All people sunk in deep darkness,
But GOD rises on you,
His sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light,
Kings to your sunburst brightness.
Christ calls now for his people to rise out of the darkness that the world has sunk into. He calls us to make the distinction between Day and night. We may not slumber any longer! It is time to take decisive action as God’s people to rise and shine. The world does not need us to comfort them as they drowse. The world needs us to get up, get out, risk action in the light of day. How else can “nations… come to our light and kings to the brightness of our dawning”?
I have always struggled with fear and indecision. I’ve always been one to second-guess and hesitate, hoping someone else will make the first move. What discipleship is teaching me, though, is that there are times when God demands that his people do the difficult work of stepping out “on nothing” and trusting him to make the way ahead. When we recognize that we have invested in darkness, we’ve got to be willing to divest, that is, to repent and turn in a new direction. Sometimes that new direction is costly or difficult. So be it. We must walk in the light.
For me it has meant leaving behind the church I knew all my childhood and in which I was first ordained. It has meant not getting comfortable places I wanted to be at home. It has led to re-ordination in a church I had never even considered joining and learning all over again. It has even meant stepping out to pastor just a handful of folks as a good many other folks looked askance and asked, “you’re doing what?”
What will it mean for you? God only knows!
“I want to walk as a child of the Light; I want to follow Jesus!”
May God grant us the awakening grace to see the light, rise, and shine.
Thanj you Fr. Paul for these encouraging words…