19*
Thursday 19 December
Arise, Shine
By Andrew Welchman
Isaiah 60.1-4, 18-20
Meditation on the reading
Let there be light.
Light is the oxygen of sight; the medium for perception; the enabler of daily living.
To illuminate, is to start seeing.
Yet, vision is a fantastic reality: an inference based on passing, incomplete comprehensions. Optical illusions reveal these parlour tricks at work: we see through a glass, darkly.
And we perceive not light but that which it reveals of our surroundings. Consider that a black surface in sunlight casts a million times more light into a viewer’s eye than a white surface in moonlight. Even so the photopic black surface looks black, and the lunar white surface white.
What then would it mean to live in everlasting light? Would the darknesses we strive to conceal have no hiding place – all our faults lifted from shadow and exposed by bright glory? Perception thus enhanced, might we love others less? And could we sleep with the lights on?
This earthly sense of light is a mirage. God’s light is not a light for seeing; it is the light of being. Vision is senseless when we have the Word. In reason (logos), inference becomes redundant.
Isaiah reveals the home where we no longer need to see; all becomes comprehensible in the life that is the light of all the people. Darkness eclipsed, we reach our unmediated communion: radiant souls entwined, resting, reflecting and rejoicing in God’s love.
Light of being
As light gives breath to sight, we eye serene:
The world about in comprehending glance.
Yet vision’s tricks beguile and build the scene,
Through inference, a mind-made circumstance.
We seek, in light, safe passage from our fears;
Retreat from darkness, life in loving grace.
While sin contrives to pierce our souls’ frontiers,
We hide our shames through artful poker face.
What if eternal light eclipsed the dark,
Exposing every shadow where we hide?
Could sleepless souls survive the telling mark
Of human faults made visible in pride?
But heaven's light transcends this earthly seeing:
In God's true radiance, light becomes our being.
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Isaiah 60.1-4, 18-20
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
————
Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise.
The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night;
but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.
Your sun shall no more go down, or your moon withdraw itself;
for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.
<<———>>
O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
