Sun Days

Surprisingly, not until well into my adulthood did I look at the word Sunday and realize the dramatic and theological importance of those first three letters.
S-u-n.
They had been staring me in the face my entire life.
Sun Day.
The day of sunshine.
Rain or shine.
The kind of sun that weather forecasters cannot overcome by any prediction of raining thunderstorms.
Not even a 100 percent chance of rain can stop this sun from shining.
Sun Day.
The day of light.
The day of light overcoming the darkness.
The sunshine day of God’s love.
The sunshine day of God’s grace.
Sun Day.
The themes of light and darkness can be found throughout the Bible and most emphatically in the Gospel of John.
“In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. There was a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to all was coming into the world,” John’s Gospel tells us.
The Voice translation of John’s Gospel is even more powerful:
“His speech shaped the entire cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creating, all things that exist were birthed in Him. His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light—A light that thrives in the depths of the darkness, blazes through murky bottoms. It cannot and will not be quenched.”
A light such as that depends on no weather forecaster’s prognostications. The light of God’s love and grace that we celebrate together on the perfectly named day of the week—Sunday—will find us no matter what the weather is doing in our lives.
No matter how hard the rain.
No matter how biting the sleet.
And no matter how deep the snow.
Or how dark the night.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus left Nazareth and began his ministry in Galilee to fulfill this passage from the Prophet Isaiah:
“The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
One of the great miracles of what we celebrate on Sun Day was articulated by Jesus during his sermon on the mount.
“You are the light of the world. A city 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 men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven.”
And that God-given light within us is alive and cannot be extinguished because it was placed in our soul by God.
In that sense, every day is “Sun Day.”
Let them all—and you—shine where there is the greatest need of light.