Friday, January 4, 2008
When was the last time you stayed up all night? In college we might have done it for good reasons (studying) … or bad ones (partying). Either way it was a challenge to greet the sunrise without having gone to bed. Even little children, for some
reason, find it exciting to stay up late.
But we soon discover less happy reasons for staying up all night. Our own pain can keep us up all night. Or watching anxiously with someone we love who is sick might find us, at
4 a.m., longing for the sunrise. Sitting in the emergency room, waiting by a bedside, in the middle of such a night it feels like the darkness will never end.
Malachi is the last prophet of the Old Testament. And here as he is writing his last chapter of the last book, it is still more than 400 years before Jesus would be born. In such a long night of anxious waiting, God’s people might well have begun to despair. But the prophet says “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.” The Savior’s coming will be like the rising of the sun.
There would still be darkness to endure. They would still see God’s fearful judgment. But when the Light at last would come, then they would “go out and leap like calves released from the stall.”
Jesus, the Light, would dawn. And sadness and sighing would flee away.
Prayer: O Jesus, Morning Star, watch over me through my own dark night, and keep me until Your rising signals the great day of joy. Amen.
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