Hope: A Dawn Story

That first beam of light that breaks open the day.  It used to mark another failed night of sleeping.  Dawn meant that I had to face another whole day without energy.  Dawn meant the beginning of a marathon with no reserve. The light of morning meant living another day like a truck driving on a paper-thin road.  My emotions fragile, my body burned out, another day.  And again. Times a thousand more.  Light meant another night was looming just around the corner. Dawn was a place of brokenness for me, not grace.

Or so I thought.

Fast forward: the very dawn that broke my resilience, became a comfort.  At the end of myself, at the end of my ability, when I could do nothing but cry out for help, God reminded me of His goodness to me and love for me. Dawn could mean other things.  It could mean that the world was still spinning and the sun still rising.  Dawn could mean that the darkness could never be king and that light would always overpower it.  Dawn could mean a new beginning, a new destination, a new rhythm of hope that would rise each morning.   Even if I couldn’t sleep, there was still light in the morning.  Even if I couldn’t sleep, one day I would not be experiencing this difficulty again.  Even if I couldn’t sleep, one day His light will extinguish all darkness forever and there will be no more tears I will have to shed over this and every other night like it.

“There is always a silver lining,” they say.  “Glass half-full,” they say.  But positive thinking will only get me half a glass, after all.  Yet there is a full glass, an abundant and spilling over glass filled with mercy and grace available to us amidst the night if we just reach for it.  If we reach for Him.

Christ.  The only hope.  The hope bringer. The hope of a reality that is already, but not yet.  Just on the horizon.  Here and illuminating, slowly.  His light, bursting through shadows, bringing life from the dead earth and restoring all that has been lost.  He is our dawn.  He is wringing out all the wet of sin and death until it is no more.

Do you see it?

Do you see dawn?

He is glorious.