I woke early this morning and as usual, it was still dark. The room was cold. My legs were reluctant. My brain creaked slowly into action, reaching for my slippers and sweatshirt at the side of the bed before running (again) into the bedpost. Shuffling my way down the stairs to brew my morning boost of caffeine, I hesitated on the bottom step. Whoa, what is that? There was a strange GLOW coming through the front windows of the house. I had scurried outside before bed last night to unplug the Christmas lights on the right side of the front porch, the one-year-old timer no longer working, but the left side was on a different timer, scheduled to turn off sometime after 11 p.m. Well, here it was 6 a.m., and they were still blazing like an all-night diner.
Why can’t a timer work the way it is supposed to? As it began to dawn outside, I realized that a timer is only designed to replicate what God has already created.
…to Him who made the great lights,
for His steadfast love endures for ever;
the sun to rule over the day,
for His steadfast love endures for ever;
the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for His steadfast love endures for ever.
Psalm 136. 7-9
We depend on God’s design that the sun will appear each day and the moon and stars at night. We take it for granted. God’s design is so precise that the very minute of sunrise and sunset anywhere in the world can be calculated to the second, never early and never late, thousands of years in the past and thousands of years in the future. For even to those who do not believe in God, sunrise and sunset are expected and depended on every day like clockwork. It is just one of the ways that God reveals Himself. And through that faithfulness, He reveals hope. Hope in a Biblical sense is not wishful thinking, but that on which you can stake your life.
Tonight there will be sunset, tomorrow the sunrise. No surprises there. And no surprise either “that His steadfast love endures for ever.”
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