Let the Sun Shine In.

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.

Genesis 1:5

Nothing is quite like the feeling I get when I rise in the morning and let the sun shine through our towering Victorian windows. My day is brighter (pun intended) when I take time to walk through each room, pulling back the curtains to reveal the welcome of a new day. I have a patterned approach: My room, then the kids’ rooms, then the back door, leaving the the front door as the finale: a glass pane leaving me open to soak up all the sun’s rays. It is the only thing separating me from a fresh breeze and the sound of my mom’s chimes singing from the rafters of our wrap-around porch.

Sunlight is everything.

It’s rays awaken all things laying dormant from the night, beckoning us out of our slumber and into a fresh start. A gift of abundant new-ness. All the things from the previous day melt away, the sunlight a beacon of what “could-be.”

Isn’t it fascinating that God created it this way? This very visual story told every day, the passing of the old and rising of the new? God always intended for the light of morning to cut through the dark of night. It cannot be contained. It cannot be measured. It cannot be re-created. The sun rises every morning and the darkness has no way to stop it.

Dark and Light.

Old and New.

Before and After.

God is the ultimate make-over artist.

In a society obsessed with transformation, the illusive and perfect before-and-after story featured in magazines and talk shows draw us in, like lemmings. We are helpless in its pull. We desire the old to become new. The drug addicts that find recovery and the depressed that find happiness. We are drawn to these stories because the “before” looks strangely familiar, as if gazing in a mirror. Our reflection is sad and lonely, too. We want an “after” for our story, just like them. Surely we will find it! There must be a better version of us out there, waiting to appear. But what if it isn’t? And if it isn’t…

What will we become?

How can we let sun shine in?

We need only look to the Bible to see where the light is found; where our transformation is discovered. Over and over we are told of the light. Our darkness doesn’t need to suffocate us- the light helps us breath again. The shame and disgrace of what we have done in the past, done in the dark, cannot hold us down. The light WILL come. Believe Boldly what the Bible says:

I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. – John 12:46

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:5

The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” – Matthew 4:16

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – John 8:12

You do not have to walk in darkness. You can find the light!

Really.

We make it hard, don’t we? We contain God’s forgiveness in a small box, limiting it to the mistakes that only make sense to forgive. God “should” forgive our little lies, and maybe some of our big ones. But that thing I did no one knows about? Never that. It wouldn’t make sense! I haven’t suffered/prayed/done enough to make up for it. It’s beyond repair.

This is not true. He brings the light, regardless of what we have done. There is hope beyond the night.