Easter Twilights (Replay of 4-9-23)

Twilight seems like a wisp of time; it comes and goes and is gone.  It occurs twice a day, bookending the days and nights.  Is this simply an accident of the Earth’s rotation and revolutions around the sun?  Nothing God creates is without meaning and purpose, and twilight, Cinthia explains, is a beautiful gift to us. 

Cinthia explored dictionary definitions of twilight as (for example) “the diffused light from the sky during early evening or morning when the sun is below the horizon and its light is refracted by the earth’s atmosphere.”  Twilight is a time of transition; it gives us time to reflect on the day we have had and to move into night, or to come awake and move into the day.  It is the in-between time when things are ambiguous, obscured, winding up or winding down.  It can be calming, and it can be invigorating.  Imagine life without twilight, life in which darkness fell suddenly as we were driving and dawn broke all at once on our sleeping eyelids.  Twilight gives us the time to adjust, to prepare, to change with the rhythm of the day.

Photographer Jacob Lucas has written about the under-appreciated and under-utilized light that comes through the atmosphere at twilight.  This is not just one type of light, either, but breaks into three phases in each twilight.  Civil twilight happens when the sun is just below the horizon and allows for seeing the brightest stars and planets and well as the horizon and objects on earth.  The light is mostly gold and pink.  Nautical twilight is the time when the sun is a bit further from the horizon; light dissipates more quickly, making details harder to see and silhouettes more realistic for capturing on film.  Astronomical twilight is the closest to darkness, and capturing handheld images is nearly impossible in its light.

The concept of twilight can extend past the natural, however.  Spiritual and emotional or psychological twilights can exist, as well.  can be natural, spiritual, emotional/psychological.

Cinthia explored the twilights involved in the Passion of Jesus.  It was likely sunset as He moved into the Last Supper with His disciples, a time when He washed the feet of His betrayer and tried to tell His friends the last things He wanted them to know before His death.  Twilight led Him into the dark night in which He would sweat blood in Gethsemane, receive His betrayer’s kiss, face the soldiers and officials, and begin six grueling trials that included periods of torture and went through dawn (the second twilight of the Passion).  That morning He carried His cross to the Place of the Skull and was nailed there, but a different kind of twilight came when the darkness of night fell at noon.  That afternoon, another strange twilight came when He committed His Spirit into the hands of His Father; the earth quaked, the veil in the temple was torn in two, and Jesus died.  The darkness was over, but twilight returned as His body was buried at sunset. 

This is what God does with us everyday in little and big pieces.  We go through hours, days, seasons, pregnancies, job trajectories, the raising of children, the nurturing of relationships.  We experience process after process; we live in process and go through a multitude of transitions.  These twilights include times it is really dark and times when we see things in clearer, more beautiful lights than we have previously done.  God walks us through these processes with great intentionality.  He

Jesus was fully present every moment of His life on earth, though we are usually not.  Twilight is an especially important time to be present because it eases us into the next phases of our life. Twilight is a gentleness from God, a kindness He gives us even though we resist it at times.

What twilight are you in?  Is something beginning?  Is something starting to end?  Is there a transition on the horizon?  Stop and hear God saying that He is with you in the process.  Accept God’s grace as He leads you into the change.  Be present in twilight.

Twilight is God’s kindness to lead us into change gradually.  There are some changes that are more abrupt, but don’t skip over the transition time He gives you.  Don’t refuse His kindness in leading you through the process His way.  God is creating this process for you to be able to get to the other side safely.

Human beings were designed to need rhythms of work and rest, expansion and contraction, sleep and wakefulness, obscurity and discovery.  We need times of preparation and times of repose.  God knows His creation and its need for seasons and rest.  Even He rested on the seventh day after He created the world, showing us this pattern and giving it to us for our sake.  The work was good, He showed us, but the rest was holy.  The Sabbath commandment gets transgressed more than any other, and it has been distorted in every direction.  But its original intent was to strengthen us, and it will still do this if we allow it.  God even gave laws to the Israelites that allowed the land to rest so it could produce more later.

Rest is vulnerable.  Rather than trust the Lord, we often want to keep working and pushing.  But breaking natural laws brings consequences.  When we fight against the physiology of our bodies, we will lose.  We will weaken ourselves and miss the healing, the restoration.  We will start too soon, end too soon, or not start or end at all.  Cinthia explains, I need to trust the One Who died for me.  If I resist doing my day, my life, I may miss some hardships but also steal from myself the blessings that are waiting for me.

Twilight often requires us to go through the grief and loss process.  Sometimes this is because we are experiencing deep loss.  Sometimes we even have to grieve the loss of something good for something better. 

Just as we did not create twilight, we cannot depend on ourselves to travel through it.  Cinthia explains a practice she uses to focus herself and experience her position with God more fully.  The Jesus Prayer, which is more than 1,500 years old, goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Cinthia is one of many believers who have practiced repeating this inside her heart and mind, inhaling during the first half of the sentence and exhaling on the second half.  She wholeheartedly recommended this practice, not because God needs our repetition to hear us, but because we need the repetition to humble ourselves, to ask unceasingly for the mercy He has already given us.  God’s destiny for us is always good but not always comfortable.  We need His mercy to come through it.

God has not forgotten us when we are in twilight.  He knows what He is doing even when He allows something good to end or allows us to go into dark nights of the soul.  He leads us to surrender as Jesus did: “Not my will but Thy will be done.”  Often we find that surrender initiates morning twilight, but He is with us the whole time before that, too.  Read Psalm 23.  He will walk us through until we are ready for the full light of day.  Then, after such a night, it is time to rise.  When that time comes, we can trust Him for that, too.  When He raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus made sure the stone was rolled away and then shouted for him to come forth.  There is a time when the cock crows, signaling dusk or dawn.  Hear the voice of the Lord calling you to come forth, and know that it is time.

Where are you in this process?  Have you been in the tomb too long?  Are you refusing to come forth?  Are you needing to stop and reflect but wanting to do something to feel better instead?  What twilight are you in?  Are you ignoring it, lengthening it, trying to get out of it too quickly?  Honor God’s timing, and return to the natural rhythm of how He made us to be.  Twilight is the transition that moves us into the next phase of our calling.  It makes us slow down and find Jesus.  Twilight is crucial.  Don’t miss it.