Chasing Light

The days are short here in Iowa, which means when I arrive at the university in the mornings, the streetlights are still on, and a fog of night still sits on the campus. At the end of most days, I head home in the cold and the dark. It wears on you, living your life in the dark. But occasionally, I'm given the gift of these glorious sunsets which are the perfect punctuation of my day. As sunlight must travel further at the end of the day through more atmosphere to get to my eyes, more light gets lost along the way. Blue light scatters away, leaving yellow, orange and red to paint the sky.

These moments, deep in the gloom of winter, are counterbalancing reminders of hope.

I seek these reminders all the time throughout the winter. It seems like they're everywhere. Sometimes it's in a brilliant sunset that happens at the end of a long day, just at the right time for me to notice. Sometimes it's in the gifts of the sundogs that appear on frigid winter days—little wisps of color flanking the low sun in the winter sky. When ice crystals form in the right shape and slowly drift down towards the Earth, they act as a prism for sunlight; it’s the hexagonal shape of the crystals that cause these sundogs to frame the sun.

And perhaps the most awe-inspiring is the aurora borealis that, if we’re lucky, makes its way far enough south that we can catch a glimpse of it in Iowa. I remember the first time I saw the aurora: waiting for the bus after a long day at the office, my weary eyes caught a flash of blue. Despite the bright lights of the university campus, it was unmistakably the aurora borealis. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that the bus was late and the temperatures were subzero—I could not tear my eyes away from those dancing cerulean and emerald hues.

These dancing lights are a result of the solar wind, high speed radiation from the heat of the sun, hitting the magnetic field of the Earth and colliding with the atmosphere. Our atmosphere shields us from this harmful radiation barreling towards us, capturing it and turning that energy into curtains of shimmering light found near the north and south poles.

We're drawn to light. There's something etched within our very being that pushes our eyes to search for it. We huddle around the warmth of a campfire, mesmerized by its dancing flames. We tilt our heads toward the night sky, searching for the faint flickering of distant stars. On summer evenings, we chase fireflies as they pulse, like tiny lanterns in the dark.

But I don't feel the same way about a sunset in the dog days of summer as I do in the depth of winter. I don't notice the sky in the same way as I do in these short, cold days. I find myself chasing every glimmer of light, intently inscribing every beautiful photon into my memory. If only I could summon that same instinct when life itself turns dark. When life feels without hope, how can I reflexively search for the light?

Light is one of the primary ways that we understand the world. It's what we anchor our clocks and calendars to, and it's one of the few ways we directly interact with the world around us. Artists dedicate their lives to understanding light­—to capture and reproduce it. In the same way, light has captivated scientists throughout history. Many experiments have been done and papers have been written to try and understand the peculiar properties of light. It’s been the source of such mysteries throughout history, yet it’s so reliable that we use it as our standard for measuring. Today, we understand light as something that acts as both a wave and a particle. Light pushes, bends, spreads, and twists; light creates and destroys. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. It’s everyday miracles like the scattering, diffraction, and emission of light that awaken me and remind me daily of the central hope of our faith. Just as light stands as one of the primary ways we make sense of our world, so too is Jesus the primary lens through which we make sense of the world.

Even though my body wishes I were somewhere lighter and warmer, I'm grateful for the reminder that winter brings that the light and the hope of Jesus's birth take place against a backdrop of darkness. Practicing Advent is practicing the hope of Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, and Elizabeth and all of those who carried the hope of deliverance from all manner of powers and principalities. And just as my eyes are hard-wired to seek light in the darkness of winter, so too can I train my heart to seek God in the dark seasons of life.