Beneath the Neon Signs

With the switch last week from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time, it starts getting dark here in the Pacific Northwest early.  REALLY early.  As in, it's already dark by 5:00 pm early, and it's not even Thanksgiving yet (as an aside, I recall being told that this was one reason why the Twilight films were shot in part in nearby Kalama--lots of darkness!).

It's one of the very few things I struggle with in living here.  Part of my emotional depression--which I was diagnosed with 12 years ago and manage very easily with medication and doctor visits--is a bit of seasonal depression: I'm simply more melancholic and lethargic during the winter.

I take steps to mitigate it--I have one of those lightboxes that is meant to emulate sunlight, and I try to be outside on days when it isn't rainy, but it's still not fun.

So I grin and bear it and drive home at night in a darkness that is illuminated only by the headlights of cars, streetlamps, and the neon signs of businesses and establishments.

And it makes me wonder if part of my seasonal depression is, in part, spiritual in nature.

Not the whole holiday season--I've never gotten depressed in the winter because of the holidays, though many do--but because of what light means, both metaphorically and Biblically, to me in my theology.

John writes that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

In Genesis, light is the very first thing that God creates, and the very first thing that God pronounces as good.

And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us to be lights to the world.

Sunlight is...for lack of a better term...selfless light.  The sun shines because that is what it does.  It serves no other purpose but to give off heat and light.

The lights that shine at night do so for necessity, or a specific reason--the neon lights of businesses to show us that they are open, to stop by and spend money on whatever it is they are hawking.

It isn't selfless.  There's a specific reason for that light.  It's artificial and self-serving.

I miss the selfless light in the dark of winter, because I've come to realize that I associate it with God Himself.

And without it, I am forced to search for God's presence elsewhere in my life.

And even as a pastor, that is sometimes not easy!

Where does God show up in your life, and what makes you feel closer or further away from God in the everyday trappings of your routine?

Yours in Christ,
Eric