The REAL Shining

Hello friends, guess what it is? This is the Christmas season, or as they say in the church calendar, it's Advent. Take both here with stories from the road, and just imagine, if you will, I'm not out on the road today. I'm sitting at my desk, there are papers scattered around, there are books here and there. Every once in a while, a car goes by outside, I opened up, but I'm thinking about Christmas and what comes to mind when I think of that. I think of parties, I think of giving, how about music? One of the things I think about the most is light or lights. When I drive down our street, there are lights on porches, there are lights wrapped around bushes and trees, and people have taken their lives in their hands going up and putting them on the edges of the gables in their houses. I think it causes a lot of tension in families, maybe husband and wife stuff of your couple, who gets the lights up and how they get there and what's going to be the parameters and are they colored or white or all of that. But they're lights everywhere at this time of year. So let's think about that just for a few minutes today. What is darkness? I asked that question some years ago, sitting with a small group in Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and to a person they said darkness is the absence of light. I got to tell you, and you know this, nobody talks about the glory of darkness. Nobody says, I think it's wonderful when it's so dark, you can't see your hand in front of your face, and nobody says that really. But they are fascinated, at least I am fascinated by the subject of light, like the value of light or that subject itself came to me about in 1970 or thereabouts, and it really, this is going to be terrible pun. It really dawned on me. The basic essential value of light in our universe and in our planet, and there are forwards that introduce what we humans know as life, L-I-F-E, and they are introverts, much like the Indy 500 drivers, start your engines, or ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States. It's one of those lines, and it's these forwards, let there be light. Let there be light, is the first sentence, the first declarative sentence, in the Holy Scriptures. We don't know the tone or the volume. Let there be light, is the first sentence, the first declarative sentence, in the Holy Scriptures. We don't know the tone or the volume. I don't know if it was a shot, let there be light, or if it was a whisper, let there be light. I don't know. What I do know is that that set the stage for everything else that follows, I think, in the entire book that we call Scriptures. I was introduced to this thinking process about light. It's when I met a guy named Howard. I was speaking one day, and Howard and his wife came into that time, a little after I got started, and they left just about the time I ended. And somebody came running up to me afterwards, and said, you know who that was that was here in this building. I said, I have no idea. He said, that was the Howard Momsted. I said, fantastic, who is the Howard Momsted? And many of you have heard me talk, you know this story. It's one of my favorite stories. And he said, the Howard Momsted is one of the top five spectroscopists in the world. I said, fabulous. What in the world is a spectroscopist? And the person said, well, that's an analytical chemist who specializes in the use of light for scientific measurement. As it turns out, Howard Momsted, a leading professor in the chemistry department at the University of Illinois back in the last part of the last century, became a friend over time. And he was so well written, so brilliant. He was light years ahead of me, no pun intended there. Light years ahead of me when it came to the capacity to think about things scientific at the very least, and usually a lot of other areas as well. And he had written nine textbooks used in 500 universities around the world on this theme of spectrophotometry, mass spectroscopy. And I just like saying those words so you can be impressed in this Christmas season. Anyway, one day I was with Howard and I said, Howard, why do you think God's first words in Scripture are let there be light? And he looked at me very kindly like I didn't have a third eye in the middle of my forehead and said, Dick, it's one of the bases for the universe. Einstein's equation on relativity, energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. He said in that particular equation, the speed of light is the constant. He said the wavelength is the unique unit, most precise unit of measurement for distance. He said, if you bombard cadmium, and I'd never thought about bombarding cadmium, if you bombard the element cadmium with light, it will fluorescent at a particular rate, and that's called the cadmium red line, and that's the basis for the atomic clock. So in that one statement, let there be light, you get space and time, distance, all of that, just in those four words. And then he goes on, went on to describe to me what happens if you don't have light. Ranchers or farmers who are listening know what happens if you don't have light, you don't have growth, you don't have this thing called photosynthesis. And if you don't have that, you don't have the food chain, and if you don't have the food chain, you don't have animal life, or you don't have humans, and just on down the line. There's so many things connected with light. If you had time, when I'm done with this podcast just a few minutes, why don't you go online and just Google Electromagnetic Spectrum, and it's the light spectrum, if you will. Not all of light is visible, much of it is invisible, maybe most of it, for all I know. But if you do that, and you just print out the spectrum, I'm looking at it right now. And it's a line, if you will, and on my left is AM radio, and on the far right are gamma rays, and you have low frequency on my left, and very high frequency on my right. And in the middle, there's a light bulb, and it has what is called a visible spectrum. So let me just list the things on the left very quickly. These are the things that are connected to light that we engage with every day. Let's say AM radio, FM radio, television, cell phones, radar, your TV remote. All of that is connected to light in some way, laser technology and other sorts of things. Then you have the light bulb, which is the visible spectrum of light, and you keep going up to the right, and you have X-rays, and then you get into gamma rays. And on the left you have infrared, and on the right you have ultraviolet, and I know I'm saying a lot of these things. But on the one hand, to put it more simply, on the left you have Dr. Phil, or your favorite television show, and on the far right you have gamma knife brain surgery, all because of the electromagnetic spectrum. And the visible spectrum of light, that which we can see, is the colors of the rainbow. It's what you, in junior high when you're trying to memorize the colors for your test, is called Roger Biv, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and to go violet. That's what we usually think of when we think about light. And I just wanted to put that out there, people thousands of years ago, would have known essentially none of what I just said about the electromagnetic spectrum. They would have known the visible part, and that's where we find ourselves in the Christmas season. 700 years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah is talking to the people of Israel. And in Isaiah the ninth chapter, in the second verse, it says this, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, the light has dawned, literally a flash of light. And it goes on to talk about one who would come, and the government would be upon his shoulders. If you fast forward 700 years to the night that Jesus was born, you have the story of shepherds in the field, and I won't read the text, but glory filled the night sky when you read Luke 2, 8 through 11, it says, shepherds were in their fields watching the sheep. And here you are, you know, you don't have the distraction of city lights when you're out in the fields in rural Bethlehem. You've got the Milky Way up, they probably didn't call it that then. You've got the belt of Orion or Star, all of that. So, you know, the sky is full, you know, thousands, millions of dogs stretching forever. But in the middle of that, you have apparently glory, a blinding light with angelic choirs and all sorts of things. Well, that'll get your attention. And then sometime later, we don't know exactly how much later, when you read in Matthew about the wise men from the east coming to see the Christ child in Bethlehem, they follow a star, and there you have it, light again, one thing right after another. When I think about light, I think not just of the food chain that we have, I think about the art we have, for example. Without light, we have no color. We have none of the distinctions that we that we like to see in terms of the range of color. You know, man, if you're wearing a bright red sweater for Christmas, if you hang that sweater in the closet, it's not red because there's no light to show that it's red. That's just how it is. So when I read the text about Jesus coming, I read in John, the first chapter, that the light shined in darkness, and it was the life of mankind, the life and light of mankind, all connected. I get to the eighth chapter of John, and it's Jesus speaking to the folks there, and he said, once again, Jesus spoke to the people and said, I am the light of the world, whoever follows me, will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. It goes on to say, while I'm in the world, I am the light of the world. When you keep reading the Gospels, and of course there are four accounts of Jesus' life, this is a piece that surprised me a little bit where he sort of flips the tables in Matthew, the fifth chapter, he says, you talking to us, you're the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl, instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven. There's something about just a little light that makes a huge difference when it's very dark. Ruth and I, over the years have traveled from the East Coast and now from Colorado to coastal California, and it's always interesting coming down Highway 15 and taking a right and coming across Nevada, and you're getting toward Las Vegas at night. And of course, the whole sky is lighted up when you're approaching Las Vegas, but you can be a long ways away from that city, and because it's dark, it looks like you're a lot closer, but it takes you forever to pass through Las Vegas. It's the light that, in fact, grabs your attention. I was in Washington, D.C. in a group one time, and a retired three-star general was talking about being in Vietnam during the war, and he said, I can remember, standing in a rice patty, or in an open field, nearer rice patty, in the jungle, and helping a whole flotilla of helicopters land by the water. And by the light of one zippo cigarette lighter, it doesn't take much light to chase away darkness, whether it's one person, or a group of people, or a truth, or something profound about that. What's fascinating to me is that when I read the book, light seems to be God's signature, whether it's the intro words, let there be light, whether it is the rainbow following the flood, Noah's family. The Israelites coming out of bondage hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, and it said they were led by a cloud by day. Can you see a towering cumulus cloud that brilliant white with Middle Eastern sun shining off of it during the daytime, and a pillar of fire by night showing the presence of God in that space? And you get to Bethlehem, and there's a star, you get a little further down the road, and there's this guy who I think I'd call him a religious terrorist who goes around and kills people who are believing in this Jesus person, his name is Saul, and he's struck down by light on the road to Damascus, as he's going up there to pick people in jail. You get to the very end of the book, and it talks about a new heaven and a new earth, and in that place in that city, there will be no need for sun mooner stars because the lamb is the light. Well, that's my little soliloquy or monologue on light for this podcast, but let me just close with this Tim Keller, a retired pastor in New York City. He has a wonderful little book called Hidden Christmas, the surprising truth behind the birth of Christ. And on page 15 in his chapter, a light has dawned. This is how he says it. In short, Jesus is the divine light of the world, because he brings a new life to replace our spiritual deadness, because he shows us the truth that heals our spiritual blindness, and because he is the beauty that breaks our addictions to money, sex, and power. As wonderful counselor, he walks with us even into and through the shadow of death, where no other companion can go. He is a light for us, when all other lights go out. That's it for now. Look forward to catching you again in a few days. Thanks so much for listening and subscribing. And in this Advent season, I just encourage you to keep your eyes open. Look at the lights, the variety of things, and when you think of that, think of the truth of the scripture that when God says, let there be light. That, my friend, was no joke. It was the basis for everything that followed. God bless, catch you later.