Let There Be Light

“Let there be light,” said the voice opening scripture eons before he cried out, pushed out of his mother’s womb. The light bringer brought light into the world in the middle of the dark of night and on the day he died, in the middle of the day, the world went dark. The light left, but returned in glory.

Former Senator Ben Sasse and I have traded texts the last few months about me heading down his way to grab a beer. Sadly, now, he is announcing he has terminal pancreatic cancer. In his message on social media announcing the diagnosis, the father, husband, and man of deep faith, wrote, in part, “A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

“Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

“Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective: ‘When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.’”

The words are bittersweet to read. A reminder to me that friendships should sometimes come before work. A reminder to us all, this Christmas season, that there is more than this.

Atheists reject all this, of course. But every Christian has a moment, often random and unexpected, where the Christian meets the Christ in some way, where we are reminded that this is real. We pity the atheist who has not met Christ and never experienced that joy, that longing, and that peace that transcends all understanding. We often meet Christ in our sorrow.

He met us in a manger around a pile of manure, pushed out of a womb into a world that would turn on Him and kill Him. Then, from being pushed out of a womb, He pushed a rock out of a tomb and came back to us. He wants a relationship with us. He does not need us, but wants us. We need Him and so often do not want Him.

Our relationship with him is one of opposites. Death gives us life. This life gives us death. He brings light to our darkness. Our darkness killed Him. His light gives us life. He restores our souls and gives us a second birth. He brings order from chaos, calm to rough seas, war to peace, peace to war, and rationality to madness. Exile turned the world upside down, us with it, while He is right side up and wants us standing up with Him.

Senator Sasse will go home soon to his Lord. In my house, we celebrate another year with my wife, who battles a lung cancer for which there is no cure — just a small pill she takes daily to keep the tumors from growing for as long as that pill will work. So many who do not believe will ask how we can worship a god who gave us cancer. But we do not worship a god like that.

Man sinned, not God. With sin comes disease and distress. God brought Himself into the world to die for our sins so that all things will be made new, the sin that brings death will itself be killed, and we will have neither tears nor cancer. God wants a relationship with us so badly, He came down, lived perfectly, died a sinner, and rose again. He offered Himself no escape from this fallen world and we do not get that escape either.

But on the other side of the veil of death lies eternity. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived,” Senator Sasse wrote. We all, even the Creator who spoke the world into being, go through that process. One day, all who believe in Him will have that process end in life. The Christian hope in the resurrection is the profound certainty of it being true. Merry Christmas.