Isaiah 60:1-3 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
This prophetic passage is pregnant with anticipation. It directs us to wake up out of our Christmas slothfulness and in radiant joy acknowledge the coming of the Light of the World.
Christmas is full of revelry, but Isaiah commends us to revel in the best possible way; to revel in the rising of the glory of the Lord. Jesus’ birth is God’s glory rising like the first rays of dawn and we are meant to be blown away by the sight of it.
Tim Peake said yesterday, that the thing that surprised him most about space was the deep deep darkness of it. That’s what Isaiah has in mind when he speaks of the spiritual darkness that covers the nations.
But the light of Jesus is like the brightest superstar that exists in the universe. It is pervasive and penetrating; and it is able to banish darkness from the deepest corners of the human heart. Ignoring the dawning of Jesus would be like Tim Peake turning a blind eye to the magnitude of the light of the sun as it rises over the curvature of the earth and bathes the space station in brilliant radiance. It should be simply impossible to ignore!
And let’s not forget, Jesus is a light that draws the attention of nations and kings according to Isaiah, so that must be a cue to us at the very least, to make sure it captivates our attention this Christmas too!