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