Thought for Today
Genesis 1:2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
Matthew 4:16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned."
John 1:3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
“Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins on March 9, 2025, prompting clocks to spring forward one hour at 2 a.m. local time” (msn.com)
Yesterday I quoted the closing lines from Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, “Do not go gentle into that good night./Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Tonight, before most of us go to bed, we will (should) set our clocks ahead 1 hour in our ultimately futile attempt to make our days last longer. I know, our annual regimen of springing forward and falling back is “primarily to make better use of daylight during the longer days of summer.” (Bing search)
I spent 86% of my life living much closer to the equator. There, the length of the periods of daylight and nighttime were more constant, with much less seasonal variation. Along with the difference in tidal flow, the seasonal variation in light and darkness was one of the most significant adjustments we had to accommodate in moving. Living in the South, the advantages of Daylight Saving Time were much less apparent than they are now in New England.
Most people reading this have never experienced true, utter, complete darkness. Even living outside of a big city, almost all of us were born after the electrification of the U.S.A. “By about 1930, 70% of households were electrified in the U.S.” (Bing search) My generation and much of my parents’ generation grew up with electric lights. Today, many are even becoming concerned with ‘light pollution,’ the fact that true darkness is a rarity. Unless you have been trapped in an elevator during a power failure (and no one has a cell phone with a flashlight app), you may never have been literally ‘in the dark.’
The same was obviously not the case for our ancestors-in-the-faith. Some of our earliest hominid ancestors discovered how to tame and domesticate fire. But, even 5000+ years ago, light and darkness were still significant enough factors to generate those verses in Genesis. Even that long ago, “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” Implicit in that verse is the understanding that the darkness was bad. The darkness was the time of those things that sparked the ancient prayer, “From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties/And things that go bump in the night/Good Lord, deliver us!”?
Were you afraid of the dark when you were a child? As a parent, do you remember your children being afraid of the dark? If you were or are a city dweller like me, do you remember your first experience being in the woods or the wilderness after the sun went down? Even if we know better, darkness is the time of the “goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties/And things that go bump in the night.” “What was that noise?” “Did that sound like footsteps outside of the tent?”
The word ‘light’ appears 229-272 times in the Bible. ‘Darkness’ appears 151-174 times. Sometimes the usage is literal, sometimes metaphorical. I have always especially loved that verse above from the Gospel of John, “1:3 . . . What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Jesus was and is truly the light of all people. Jesus illuminated and illuminates the darkness of fear, hate, envy and all of our negative, human emotions. Part of our Christian duty is to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Christians rage against the dying of the light by sharing the gospel message of God’s love and God’s mercy. We call that sharing ‘evangelism.’ Our English word comes from the Greek εὐαγγέλιον, the good news. That sharing of the good news is the one time when I am sure that such raging is an expression of joy and celebration . . . and the raging can be calm, softly spoken and warmly shared.
Stay safe, share the good news, trust God,
Pastor Ray