Seeing in the Dark

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness---on them light has shined.  Isaiah 9:2

In the name of God, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  AMEN.
 

I don’t know if you’ve seen the moon the past couple of evenings.
It has been a stunning yellow upside down crescent hanging low in the sky.
As I was driving home in the evening on Tuesday night, the moon appeared low in the western sky over the Meadow Mill building as I made my way down Union Street home to Clipper Mill.
I was probably pondering about the schedule for the next day—greening of the church, bulletins, a sermon, and some last minute Christmas shopping.  As I was wondering if I could fit it all in, then it happened.  I saw the moon for the first time that night.
And when I saw the moon, all the future chores and schedules vanished from my mind.
All I could see was the moon.
And as the moon appeared just above the Western horizon last Tuesday night, by myself, in the car, I actually gasped outloud.

When we live in the city, in an urban area, it is hard to notice God’s nighttime handiwork.
Like Tuesday night, we might be surprised when we see a full moon one evening as we make our way home.
And then there are the moon’s heavenly companions—the stars.
With the light fields of our city creating an aura of brightness for miles around, the stars are near impossible for us to see.
It takes a trip far from the city to see the stars.
I have seen the stars on camping trips.
On the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  
In South Africa, the Southern Cross became a beacon for me at night—just as Orion and the North Star are bright markers in this hemisphere when I am in the mountains of Western Maryland.
I bet that you have a spot that you can remember being awe struck at the blazing beauty of a nighttime sky.
But for most of us city folk,  the stars shine silently every night hidden behind the blaring noise and lights of our lives.

In the not-so-distant past, the moon and stars were central everyday markers in people’s lives.
“The roots of the study of stars, moons, planets and galaxies—known as the study of astronomy—extend to before written records.
But it is clear that, until very recent times,  humans have always observed the sky.
The earliest known records for astronomical observations came from Sumerian and Babylonian cultures (that’s modern day Iraq) and date as far back as 3000 bc.
Long before the coming of Christ into our midst.
The first star maps, the names of many stars and constellations that we refer to today came from records of court-appointed astronomers from this long ago period.
Our basic mathematics—such as the base-60 counting system and geometric shapes—came from this study of the stars some three millennia ago.
Great monuments such as Stonehenge in England and the Great Pyramids of Egypt trace their foundations back to the positions of the heavenly beings”  ((New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, p. 238)

On a daily basis for thousands of years, sea captains, travelers by horse and foot, found their way home or to a new land by the stars.
Our ancestors used to keep track of the stages of the moon each month, measuring tides and body by its journey across the sky.  Crops were planted and harvested according to the position of the luminous beings in the nighttime sky.
And some 2000 years ago, shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night and three wise men from the east were guided by a star to a manger in Bethlehem.  
It was a natural thing for them to do.
The shepherds knew the nighttime sky like the back of their hands.
Each evening as they protected their sheep and kept them out of harm’s way, I imagine the shepherds huddled around a fire on the hillside and told story of the stars.
Stars and constellations were given names—and became companions on the way.

But we have now become strangers to this whole nightly world.
We “no longer know much about darkness.  But live in “a starkly lighted world” where we can shop and work all night and day.
As Mark S Burrows, Professor of Christian history writes: “The gains of inhabiting such a starkly lighted world are clear:  we stave off the darkness in order to provide a measure of comfort and security.  Ours is a world far removed from that of antiquity when the stars oriented travelers within a largely unmapped world, and the constellations of the night sky told stories that rooted ancient people in their identity. …Most of us would be hard pressed to identify the moon’s phase on any given day, and few know the tales told by the stars, tales of generosity and jealousy, of conflict and comfort?...What life would not be deepened by one as evocative as “Cassiopeia’s Chair,” the lovely but vain queen who angered Poseidon and was punished by circling the celestial pole half the time in an upside-down position?” (quoted in Weavings, Volume XXC, Number 1)

Indeed—today--darkness is a largely unmapped world and we are surprised when we find ourselves in a dark place.  
Have you ever been driving on a dark night and suddenly become inexplicably lost?
A kind of terror can seize us when we are lost at night.
Sometimes a kind of emotional darkness seizes up in us for a short period of time in the light of day.
Like when we have a flat tire when we least expect it or when we lose our keys or the dog is sick or the computer is down for a day or a snowstorm changes all our plans.

But then there is a different kind of darkness.  What poet Emily Dickenson calls “the larger darkness.”
A darkness when we feel as though we are plunged into a dark tunnel with no end in sight.  Confused.  Turned around.  Like Cassopoeia we feel as though we are sitting upside down while the rest of the world goes along right side up.
Perhaps we’ve gotten a troubling diagnosis or we are waiting for definitive tests.  
Perhaps we’re wondering how we go on with loved ones passing from our daily lives.
Maybe are job status is up in the air.  A relationship is strained or broken.
We come to Christmas Eve with darkness all around.

And then there is that passage from Isaiah:  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness---on them the light has shined.”
And from the Prologue of the Gospel of John:  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

How can that be?

How can that be that sometimes in the deepest darkness, the light shines forth stronger?
Is it that in the deep darkness, we finally can see the light?  Maybe the only place we can see the light?  Like the ancient travelers, the darkness is where our true identity is formed and found.

I recently heard a true story about a dark,cold Christmas Eve on the wintry prairie of Canada.
The three sisters –ages 5, 8 and16--had gone to bed excited about the day to come and, in the middle of the night, sound asleep, they were awakened to shouts of fire.
They ran from their farmhouse into the night and they watched as their home burned to the ground.
Huddled together under blankets in the barn in the middle of a frightening Christmas Eve night, the sisters spoke into the darkness to each other.  They spoke of presents they had bought for one another.  Presents never to be given on Christmas Day—destroyed with their home just yards away.
As they felt the warmth of one another and peered at the stars shining through the cracks in the barn roof, a different reality came upon them.
Life was now to be a great adventure forward.
In the middle of loss, something new was coming upon them and life would never be the same.
And as their exhausted parents slept nearby, the girls realized that they had each other.
Yes, eventually the home was rebuilt.
But that night the house was gone and love was all around.
Great material possessions had been lost—yet what mattered most never left.
It was there stronger than ever.
In the barn on a night that at first seemed the darkest of all.

When our nights, our lives seem the darkest of all, that’s when we need the light in the darkness.  In fact, maybe we need the darkness to finally find the light.

Just as Emily Dickinson  says ---“in the dark time, the eye begins to see.”
Sometimes all we need is a little bit of light shining in the darkness.
A nightlight in our room.  The warm hallway light coming through a door just left ajar.
That’s all we need to feel security, comfort, love.

That is what Christmas is about.
The tiny light in a manger coming into our lives once again.
The light that represents that tiny sliver of God’s love just coming into our hearts when we need it most.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

In the darkest times, the eye begins to see.

AMEN.