light – sethlewis.ie

It Isn’t Night for the Moon

Winter in Ireland. The time of year when the sun keeps shortening his hours, and the darkness encroaches steadily. It wasn’t late, but as I passed through our town that evening the sun’s face had already been missing for hours. And yet, I could still see his light. I saw it reflected off the full moon, beaming in the sky in all of its silver glowing glory.

Clouds (a poem)

As clouds diffuse
the sun’s great light
and drain the world of colour
my restless thoughts
have covered up
your glory and your power
at times a ray—or two—breaks through
at times I think I’m glimpsing you
and suddenly the world explodes
in living colour I behold
all things as they were meant to be
(it’s in your radiance I see)
and then my anxious thoughts return
and then my anxious heart unlearns
the beauty of your majesty
the goodness of your plan for me
and in the clouds (the glory-thieves)
I cry, “Lord, help my unbelief!”

Dappled Glory (a poem)

Our world is full of wonderful things, and life here is brightened with moments of grace and happiness so powerful it almost hurts. And then they pass. Like sunlight through the leaves, these moments cannot last, but our longing for more directs our hearts upward, to where these glories come from. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote this poem.

Dappled Glory

There’s a kind of beauty that
makes the heart ache
that makes the heart long
that makes the heart break
to be bigger and wider
and stronger to take
in the glory
of one single
moment

There’s a kind of summer
that makes the heart sing
and still
somehow
you miss the spring
and long for autumn
as wonders move
like sun-beams
across the grass—
dropping dappled glory
as they pass

Light (a poem)

When the sun comes out in Ireland, the people come out, too. We appreciate the sun, because we never know how long we’ll get to see it. We soak it in as much as possible—the brightness, the warmth, the Vitamin D, the light. I’ve heard that the physics of light are complicated, that it’s simultaneously a wave and a physical particle, which is confusing. But just think of all the things it does: it illuminates the world and makes our eyes work, for starters, but that’s only the beginning. It also carries heat from the sun 150 million kilometres away to warm our world and kiss our skin. Light also helps our bodies create Vitamin D, and even more impressively it helps plants all over the world photosynthesise the energy they need to grow. In other words, without light, we wouldn’t merely be blind—our whole world would be a wasteland.

Don’t Fight The Shadows

A poem for the times when God’s people find themselves walking in the dark:

Don’t fight the shadows
My child
When they fall on your way
Obscuring the warmth and
The light of the day

When they cause you to shiver
And stumble
And grope
When they cause you to question
Your reasons
For hope

Lift Up Your Head

Halloween is a dark holiday, but I don’t find it very scary. Costumes and plastic skeletons don’t intimidate me. It’s all pretend, and for most people, the main point is sugar. I find the news headlines in my Twitter feed a lot more terrifying. Some of the themes are the same—darkness, death, and evil running free. I guess the decorative ghosts and tombstones and skeletons do contain an element of realism: there is real darkness in this world, and real death. At our point in history, there’s no question that the real skeletons on this planet outnumber the living humans by a long shot. That’s a sobering thought. And there are plenty of other fears for those of us who aren’t skeletons yet—from disease and disaster to dystopian decisions and disturbing trends and growing disorder and disunity, you don’t have to look far to get a fright these days.

In Luke 21, Jesus warned his disciples about difficult days that were coming. He said, “People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world.” Does that sound familiar? But he tells his disciples: “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The Reason For Windows

It’s a good thing I like my house. As Ireland’s third coronavirus lockdown drags on with no end in sight, we’re all getting used to being in our own spaces. One of the reasons I like my house is the windows, especially the ones in the back that let the sun stretch all the way across the floor whenever it takes a fancy. From those same windows, I can watch the songbirds gather at our bird feeder, and I can see the flowers bloom in our little garden. All of these things remind me that the world is bigger than the box I live in.