"O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death's dark shadows put to flight."
One of the best things scenic photographers know is going out and shooting a sunrise. It's going to be cold and dark when you arrive, and you may be there quite a while, so you dress in layers, wear warm boots (waterproof ones too, if you think you may be sloshing through a marsh) and a hat and gloves. And you stand there with your tripod set up and your camera at the ready while you wait for the sun to rise and "disperse the gloomy clouds of night." Once it begins, once the dawn starts, the waiting and the cold have all been worth it as you watch and photograph the splendid light show and the temperature gradually rises. Here I'm posting a "before" and an "after" photo from Lake Chocorua in New Hampshire, taken on a chilly October morning perhaps an hour apart.
This must be how it is for those who "dwell in darkness and the shadow of death" and are calling on Christ the Radiant Dawn to come shine on them. In other words, in one way or another, for each of us. It takes patience, preparation, faith, and hope. Waiting in joyful hope until the day the Dawn from on High gradually breaks upon us and we feel the warmth and see the light, and we can sing, "Hail, the sun of righteousness."
Yet the darkness has a purpose beyond just waiting, like the darkness a Christmas cactus needs before it can bloom.
ReplyDeleteQuite right! Or the seeds in the ground. The darkness of dormancy is not an inactive state. But--and here I'm jumping ahead a few months--the darkness in which we wait for the Easter vigil to begin, for that one light to start making its way down the aisle, that is sheer waiting, expectancy, all attention and energy on that waiting for this one cosmic event, the arrival of the Morning Star That Never Sets.
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