Sunrise

 

My favorite time of day (other than cocktail hour) is sunrise. In the hot summer, I walk at White Rock Lake, arriving before dawn. When it’s colder, I nestle in my prayer chair and watch the sunrise from my east-facing window.

Every sunrise is a little different. On cloudless days, the brilliant sun is too bright to look at. The best sunrises are when there are clouds and dust in the air to create breathtaking colors from deep purple to pale pink. Sometimes the sun is as bright red as a stoplight. My favorite is when it emerges as a bright rosy orange sphere. Some days the clouds are just too thick for the rising sun to break through.

As we transition from one calendar year to the next, it seems appropriate to spiritualize the sunrise. I’m not the first to do so. Here are some wonderful Bible verses that mention the sun.

2 Samuel 23:3-4, the last words of David: “When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.”

Psalm 19:1, 5-6: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Psalm 84:11: For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.

Proverbs 4:18: The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

Ecclesiastes 11:7: Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. (The word “sun” appears 32 times in Ecclesiastes.)

Malachi 4:2: But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.

And I’m not the first to make a connection with the sunrise and God’s constancy. We all have days of brightness and good cheer, when God’s presence is almost too brilliant to gaze at. Those gorgeous purple and orange colors that are so pleasing to the eye remind us of God’s tender, lavish care for His earth and His creatures.

Then there is the metaphor of the thick, impervious clouds. As the year 2020 closes out, my own vision is clouded with anxiety over events around me—the political situation, the continuing COVID crisis and its toll on the economy as well as on people’s lives. I’m also, as so many people are, deeply troubled about the well-being of someone I love. It’s a cold, dark, fearful time and place.

Still, each day’s rising sun assures us that God is still on His throne. Even when we can’t see the sunrise through the clouds, we know it’s there and that sooner or later, it will rise in all its brilliance. God promises His presence, and the ever-rising sun gives us His reassurance.

The Light Shines in the Darkness

 

I’m hoping to have lunch this week with a Jewish friend. For her, it will be the middle of Hanukkah, for me, the middle of Advent. As I think about this get-together, it occurs to me that she and I have so very much in common. Our respective faiths motivated us both to be involved in a social justice endeavor. Both of us are worried about a close family member who is very ill. And like everyone else, we are both reeling from the awfulness of this year of COVID.

We have much in common spiritually as well. Hanukkah, the festival of lights, commemorates the events of 168 BCE when the Jews, led by Judas Maccabeus, revolted and overthrew the Greek-imposed government and the king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Antiochus had violently persecuted the Jews and desecrated the Temple.  The Jews sought to purify the Temple. They vowed to keep the lamps burning in the Temple for eight straight days and nights, but there was not enough oil to keep the flames burning. By a miracle of God, the oil lasted throughout the eight days and nights.

For Christians, Advent is the season of preparation before Christmas, when we commemorate the birth of Jesus. We believe that Jesus was God in flesh, manifesting as a normal human. His life as a teacher and healer led up to his death on the cross, which was a once-for-all atoning sacrifice for the sins of those who believe and accept this grace-gift of God’s forgiveness and mercy.

Of course, there is much, much more symbolism and meaning in both Christmas and Hanukkah. Through the ages, each generation and each individual has found a unique and timely application.

As I understand it, Hanukkah is about reconfirming faith in God, recognizing God’s faithfulness in delivering his people, in being present with them through all times and all circumstances. For me, Christmas is likewise reconfirming God’s faithfulness in delivering his people, in being present with them through all times and circumstances. We use the term “Emmanuel,” which is Hebrew for “God with us.”

The Jews, the Jewish faith, was intended by God to be a light to the Gentiles, that is, to all the peoples of the world who don’t yet know God. (Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6; Luke 2:32; Acts 13:47). Jesus, a Jew, called himself the light of the world (John 8:12).

As I look around me, there is so much darkness. Illness, injustice, violence, hypocrisy, delusion. But I also see people preparing for Christmas and celebrating Hanukkah. That’s why there are so many lights throughout the city and in people’s houses. People are always looking for the light – figuratively and literally.

Jews celebrate that light with the Hanukkah menorah, the eight-branched candle lampstand. Christians celebrate that light with candles, lightbulbs, and stars (as in the star of Bethlehem). To me, it’s pretty much the same thing. It is God’s light, God’s promise, God’s faithfulness. My two favorite Bible verses this season are: John 1:5 and Isaiah 60:1.

So, let us be comforted that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” And let us be inspired to “Arise, shine, for your light has come.”

Gifts

Once a month or so, I gather on Zoom with some women from our church (mostly white) and some from another church in our city, who are mostly Black. We’ve been meeting with this group of ladies for about five years now. We converted to Zoom in June, due to the you-know-what pandemic.

Our objective has always been to build bridges among ourselves as a way of advancing racial reconciliation and social justice in our community. Since the group started as a book club, we often—but not always—focus on books and our mutual love of reading.

In our Zoom meetings since June, we have been very deliberate about discussing race issues. This was prompted by the shock and sorrow we all felt following the George Floyd killing. We were moved to up our game, energize our commitment. We have discussed specific books, created a running list of relevant titles, and shared our personal experiences with racism.

For our December gathering, we challenged ourselves to imagine a gift we would give to someone else that would deal with the issues of racism and social justice. I sent out the invitation with a couple of suggestions. I’d give the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo to a number of friends and family members (that I won’t mention by name). I’d give the legislature of Texas a semester course in Black history. I’d give a turkey dinner to all of my Black friends in this group just so we could enjoy each other’s company at length.

And I really would like to give those gifts. But as a participant in the discussion, I had to think up another gift idea to share.

My gift would be to all of the white people in my city and the Black people in my city: a day or a week of swapping places. Here’s why. One of the most enlightening things we do in this group is listen to each other’s stories. We started with some of our Black sisters talking about the racism they lived through. These women grew up in the South and forged their own education and careers decades ago when racism was much more overt and sanctioned than it is now. I was a little surprised when they wanted us white women to share our stories, too. We did some soul-searching and discovered that there is much more racism deep in our cultural and family backgrounds than we would like to admit. It was humbling.

We learned a lot from these short descriptions of our personal journeys. Imagine how much we would learn and understand if we actually walked a mile or more in someone else’s shoes.

Several of the sisters on our Zoom call had similar ideas about helping people understand on a visceral level the experiences of people “who don’t look like me.” One suggested a magic mirror to let the viewer see how others see her. Another wanted virtual reality glasses so the user could experience different scenarios. A particularly pointed suggestion was that each of us spend a day in a corporate human resources department interviewing candidates. The trick would be that, by removing anything that would indicate the candidate’s ethnicity, we’d have to base our judgment solely on credentials. This begs the question of what would be the demographic profile of the people we would hire.

All of us on the Zoom call were in agreement that learning about other people’s experience is vital to building bridges and advancing racial reconciliation and social justice.

We also were unanimous in our conviction that the best gift we could give would be a personal relationship with Our Lord Jesus. Only when our weary, broken world embraces Christ’s teaching, “Love your neighbor as yourself” will we have any hope of any kind of reconciliation.

Personal Best

 

I did it. I accomplished one of my personal goals of reading 100 books in one year. I’ve never been able to read more than about 75. I think I was able to reach the goal because I had a little more time on my hands this year to sit and stitch or knit while listening to an audiobook. Not much good has come from the COVID pandemic, but this would be on that list of silver linings.

My list includes 47 book books and 53 audiobooks. To be perfectly honest, a few of them were pretty short, such as the one-hour audiobook Agatha’s First Case, by M.C. Beaton or the 125-page Healing Hope: Through and Beyond Cancer, by Wendy Harpham, MD. On the other hand, the list also includes American Ulysses, by Ronald C. White (826 pages about Ulysses S. Grant); and Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (26-hour audiobook). I also included the Bible; at least I didn’t count that for 66 individual books.

I read more fiction (72) than non-fiction books (38). Due to the COVID pandemic, I often just wanted to read something sort of mindless and fun. That said, some of the fiction books were tough to read, such as The Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. On the other hand, a lot of the non-fiction was very entertaining, such as Save Me the Plums, by Ruth Reichl.

Within non-fiction, I read several spiritual books and a ton of books about social justice/racial reconciliation. I learned a lot. I also read a number of books about the Christian approach to LGBTQ issues. I am still learning a lot there, too.

The one-hundredth book was The Short Stories of Jesus, by Amy-Jill Levine. I read that book a few years ago and found it so intriguing, I wanted to read it again. It’s still intriguing and disturbing, which is what Dr. Levine wants for us to feel as we read the parables of Jesus.

Watch this space for some reviews or reflections on some of the books I’ve read this year. Let me know if you have any curiosity about my list.

Okay; I admit I may be bragging a little. Yet, this really has been a goal for me during the past few years when I started writing down each book as I finished it. I intend to read a few more before December 31, 2020. Who knows what next year brings? More enjoyable hours of reading, I hope. But fewer hours of being locked down due to COVID, I pray.