“There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness ….”

G.K. Chesterton

Thursday morning I watched as the Old Moon hung in its last phase, a silken-sliver in the blue light of dawn. I was awed by the timing of this beauty—here at the first of Advent when I had just been meditating on scriptures about the Light of the World.

I tried to capture the scene with my phone camera without much success. The darkness was too much; the light was too little. The camera couldn’t recognize enough light in the thin line of moonlight above the glowing horizon to make the image. My attempts weren’t even a faint reflection of its beauty to the naked eye.

The darkness is always around us. If the circumstances of daily living don’t include an immediate grief or sorrow, the noise of the world is quite willing to draw you into the never-ending cycle of bad news. I find myself too often living like my my phone camera, letting my soul drift into inky black, unable to focus on the small but ever-present slivers of light.

But this pre-dawn sky was a fitting icon of the longing and hope we embrace in this season. Advent is a time to embrace both realities of dark and light. We are in desperate need of redemption—in the world broadly and our lives individually—yet we also celebrate the hope of his victorious return to bring wholeness to all of His creation. It is time to step away from the camera and watch for beauty in the coming Dawn.

“… in Your light, we see the light.” —Psalm 36:9