Dazzle
The Advent Word for today is 'Dazzle'.
What could be more dazzling than the sun? A part of the sun is shown in this image of a filament eruption accompanied by solar flares. A sight to dazzle anyone attempting to look at it directly.
It is no surprise that sun worship features in many ancient religions, or that times, seasons and calendars are constructed in relation to the sun's position in the sky. Without the light of the sun there would be no life on earth, or at least not as we know it now.
In the vision of the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 21 are these words about the 'city of God':
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics 1985)
What could be more dazzling than the sun? A part of the sun is shown in this image of a filament eruption accompanied by solar flares. A sight to dazzle anyone attempting to look at it directly.
It is no surprise that sun worship features in many ancient religions, or that times, seasons and calendars are constructed in relation to the sun's position in the sky. Without the light of the sun there would be no life on earth, or at least not as we know it now.
In the vision of the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 21 are these words about the 'city of God':
"And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it."
The glory of God is pictured as a light, glorious enough to give light for all nations. Will that light dazzle or simply enable us to see more clearly what now we can only dimly glimpse?
Part of the Advent hope is the expectation of the coming 'great day of the Lord' when evil will be destroyed. The prophet Malachi speaks of that time of judgement. His book gives a terrifying picture, but also one of promise and hope. Here is one of the promises:
"But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings."
At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere we can experience dramatic sunrises and sunsets. With sun low in the sky most of the day it is easy to be dazzled by it, especially when driving towards the sun. I think it was probably in winter about 1877 that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote the poem that uses the metaphor of a dazzling electrical charge to describe the 'grandeur of God'. Here its is, one of my favourite poems, 'God's Grandeur':
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics 1985)
Image Credit: Nasa Goddard Space Flight on Flickr, CC License
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