Let the Light of the Son brighten your dreary post-holiday season

“Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark.”   ~R. Tagore

The earth rotates around the sun, not in a circle, but in an elliptical orbit. Oddly enough the earth is closest to the sun in January (91.3 million miles) when it is the coldest in Nebraska and farthest from the sun in the searing heat of July (94.4 million miles). A difference of 3.1 million miles. So, why isn’t January hot and July bitter cold? Because, the surface temperature and the changing seasons are not affected all that much by a mere 3.1 million miles, but by the 23.5 degrees tilt of the earth’s axis. In summer “Old Sol” sits high in the sky and we face the warming heat straight on. But in winter the sun sits low in our southern sky and it is the angle of the sunlight slanting through our atmosphere that makes the mercury fall.

January brings temperatures consistently below freezing. Moisture in the glacial air transforms trees into shadowed icy lace. Rimed wire fences take on crystalline beauty. Intricate and unique patterns of hoarfrost crawl window panes as our world takes on a frozen fairyland transformation. Although the New Year always finds us closest to the sun, it is if Nebraska has turned its face away from the radiant heat and glory of our star - and in the shadow, our part of this world cools and whitens.

The phenomena of being close to the sun and still not feeling its radiant heat is not all that different from the way we Christians handle the joy of Christmas.

It seems that all too often, after the buildup and anticipation of the long Advent season and with the culmination of the wondrous celebration of the birth of our Savior, comes the moment we turn our eyes from the “Star”. Not the star that stood in the sky over Bethlehem, but the “Star” that lay in the humble manger.

Busy with paying bills, dealing with overspending and hauling suitcases (ours or visitors) to planes, trains or automobiles, our world narrows from the bright and shinning miraculous to the cold and frosty secular. The soul-warming glow of angel voices on a starlit night so long ago melts into the slush of everyday chores.

And like the earth in January with its face titled away from its source of warmth and life, our souls, also tilted away from our source of spiritual warmth and eternal life, can become as cold and barren as the frozen Nebraska countryside.

It is now, on the other side of Christmas, that we need to consciously remember to sprinkle our material lives with the delicate Bethlehem stardust of the ethereal. Hold tightly to the Christmas Spirit in the cold and dreary letdown days of January.

Continue to light the world. Continue to hear angel anthems. Continue to spread the love of Christ as you tip your face toward the “Star” and bathe in the light of the “Son.”

May it be so for you. May it be so for me. And may January find us all singing in the dark.