Looking Toward the Light

“…as the light of the morning, when the sun rises,
a morning without clouds,
like the gleaming of the sun on new grass
after rain.”
— 2 Samuel 23:4

Hope rises on the horizon.

Wait!

Is it sunrise or is it sunset?

Tevye and his wife, in Fiddler on the Roof, blend the two together as they celebrate the passages and cycles of life.

“Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don’t remember growing older.
When did they?”
— Sheldon Harnick

Sunset reminds us that life is good and that the passages of time are purposeful. Sweet memories flood our souls through the years, but time refuses to stand still.

“Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly flow the days …”
— Sheldon Harnick

Moments turn to days.
Days flow into weeks and months.
Months accumulate into years, decades, and scores of years.

With each passage, there is a sunset.

Then comes the darkness—sometimes brief, sometimes long. There are always times of darkness.

Sometimes, in that darkness, the moon and stars shine brilliantly. Sometimes they are obscured by clouds or by the position of the earth in its turning.

But the light is always there.

And when the morning comes, there is a sunrise.

We remember that life unfolds in cycles—rhythms and movements like a piece of music marking the passages of our days.

The light of God is always shining, and it does not matter whether we are gazing into a sunrise or a sunset.

Either way, we are looking toward a new day.

The poet George Herbert expressed it beautifully:

The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

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Reflection

Whether we stand at the sunrise of something new or the sunset of something completed, God’s light remains constant.

And every ending carries the quiet promise of another dawn.