This week, I’ve been paying attention to the sights outside my window. Even though I’ve found it too cold for a long walk, I’ve been blessed to witness a family of deer taking refuge in my backyard. I’ve watched a rabbit sit still on top of the ice with its fur keeping it warm. I’ve marveled at a squirrel stand tall on a fence post in the gusts and gales. I’ve seen the moon hanging in the sky like a sentinel before waiting for the morning. On the drive over here today, as the thermometer registered fifteen degrees below freezing, in the blue sky with no clouds to impede it, shone the sun, bright and golden, a harbinger of more optimism than should be expected for a winter’s day in February.

I will never forget when years ago my son Walker declared this truth to no one other than himself, as he and I walked to a store through the parking lot. Passing from shade and into light, he announced confidently, “The sun makes us warm,” somehow intimating in his toddler tones a more profound reality hidden underneath.

What is underneath becomes known because of the light. Deep in the ground, below the gray-green grass which had stopped growing months ago, on even the snowy mornings, germinates new, hidden life in the form of white snowdrops, blue hyacinth, yellow daffodils, red tulips, and purple crocuses.

What is hidden in you and me is our power to create new life out of the dark and stony earth. All around, things can appear hard and unforgiving. Decade to decade, we worry about how violent our community is becoming. We are pained to see our friends and relatives share words and arguments that are coarsened and cruel. Our “mountainish inhumanity” is out in the open, as it ever was. Has empathy gone into hiding? Has the grace of God, which is given so freely to you and me, finally failed to transform us and the world into disciples of Jesus Christ, and to embody his beatitudes in our actions? I genuinely hope it is only dormant, and that what is hidden now will one day become known and seen, gratefully acknowledged by passersby.

Grateful acknowledgement of the gifts of God is what it means to live with the bright eyes of a child, waking in the morning, expectant of blessing all around. To such as children does the kingdom of heaven belong, because they see light all around them, and the light within them can no better be hidden than the light from a city upon a hill.

“A city on a hill cannot be hid,” nor should it. The light we see as the evening falls brings comfort to all its neighbors – those who dwell in the light of the community and those who dwell beyond it. We need that comfort, as we find ourselves wearied by each day. We tend to look for light beyond us, in others, like we did when we were little. We want a parent to make us happy, to cheer us up after we’ve gotten scraped or bruised. We want someone to take care of us.

But what about the light you have in your own being? This week, this winter, this year, have you felt like stoking the fires within you? Please don’t forget that others marvel at the beauty of the light that comes from your life, even if you rarely witness as much from them.

We can always either find or hide the light which shines within us, the fire of the Holy Spirit which burns in our spirit, which gives vitality and fullness to us and to those around us, which makes our days full and our joy complete.

Think of those who get in the habit of hiding their light so much that they forget they ever had a light in the first place. They can start to believe they are cursed, their life is doomed, things are never going to go their way, or the right way, or in any way that would make them glad. And if that’s their outlook, then they naturally would choose to congregate with others who hide their light. Maybe it’s because they’ve been pained so much by seeing in others what they forgot is also in them. Maybe it’s out of a sense of resignation, that even if they admit they have a light from God to share, they do know, also, the struggle to let it shine in a world which is growing darker by the year.

Or maybe it’s for fear of being exposed to what they’ve worked desperately to suppress and deny. So, all around them, they see no light. They dwell in darkness. They live in a land of deep darkness, and they want us to live there, too. They wield weapons against their neighbors who are only asking for us to live with decency. They imprison refugees who need our aid. They exploit vulnerable girls, aged ten, girls who should be protected and nurtured. They divert public funds to themselves and hoard wealth, while others starve and fall ill. It is the opposite of John Wesley’s vision of the Kingdom of God, which he described in 1744: “All are harmless as doves and united in one body by one Spirit. They are all of one heart and of one soul, neither sayeth any of them that aught of the things which he possesses is his own. There is none among them that lacketh.” This kingdom of love and light is what we seek.

In the darkness of a life without the light of God, there is no sunrise in the east, no sunset in the west, no north star to follow. We don’t know where to go. In a word, we are lost. And if we are lost, then we also may be scared and fearful.

Fear makes us forget who we are, what we are capable of, what gifts God has given us to restore, heal, and uplift others. Fear makes us act in ways which are contrary to our conscience, to our faith, to our principles and ideals. Fear makes us behave not like the people of God, not like people at all, but like small, spiteful, hateful creatures of the night, which have no place in the kingdom of heaven.

Fear makes us forget that we have a light within us to share, that we are what Jesus names us to be: We are salt and light in the world; we are good, always, and everywhere.

And the best place for a light to be is in a land of deep darkness. The best time to turn on a lamp is as night is falling. The best time to purchase salt from the hardware store is when we are surrounded by ice. The best time for you and me to be what God made us to be is when we worry the world wouldn’t welcome God’s light and joy in it. The best time to love is not when we see love around us, because love isn’t something the world earns from us; it’s something we give to the world – because love is something to be given. It’s so powerfully transformative and so desperately needed that it can’t possibly be merited. We can’t hold back from loving our neighbor because we are frightened of the violence of the world.

How many times do you hear in the Scriptures the pleading of the angels, “Do not be afraid,” and do not be anxious? How many times do you need to be reminded to resist the fear which threatens to destroy what you were made to be? How many mornings do you need to see the sun rise before you let your light shine brighter than you thought possible? 

Could this be a morning like that?

What will you do with the light and love that you are given by God? Will you lavish it on others even before they treat you warmly, even when they greet the morning with grouchiness, even when you catch yourself wishing you had a parent to fill you with love first? Because you do. Your Maker in heaven loved you first and will love you endlessly. Your Savior lived and loved so that you would live and love.

The only question to ask is: What will you do in the hours of daylight you have been blessed with today, this week, this winter, this year? I can’t wait to hear about it. I can’t wait to see it. I invite your response. Amen.