Dayspring 
By Foy Valentine

Christmas is a time for celebrating.

No wonder that when I was a kid we shot off firecrackers, lit Roman candles, waved sparklers, killed the fatted chicken, feasted on fruit cakes, and generally made merry.

Christmas is a time for happiness.

It is a time for gifts, for angels, for stars, for music, for joy, and for lights.

When Christmas comes, the winter solstice is already past.  The days are getting longer already.  In the natural order of things, day has begun to conquer night.  Things are looking up.

The people of God have special reason to rejoice for “the dayspring from on high hath visited us” (Luke 1:78).  Consider this profundity in its context.

When pregnant Mary went from Nazareth “into the hill country” to see her cousin Elisabeth, herself six months pregnant with John, there was at their meeting a spirited exchange of epiphanies.  Elisabeth burst forth first “with a loud voice” glorifying God; and then Mary’s very soul overflowed with what we have come to call her Magnificat, her inspired utterance of praise to the Lord.  Then, after an unreasonably long visit of three months with her kinswoman Elisabeth, Mary finally went home.  Then, Elisabeth had her baby, and her husband Zacharias, mute since the angel of God first broke all this good news to him, lifted his own voice and “prophesied:”

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began;

That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;

To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;

The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear,

In holiness and righteousness all the days of our life.

And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest; for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

The Oxford English dictionary, the best in our language, says that dayspring means daybreak or early dawn.  The word is now said to be chiefly poetic or figurative.  It is generally designated as archaic.  Our vocabularies are poorer; however, for our abandonment of this remarkable word, dayspring.

As Zacharias understood, dayspring speaks of Christmas, of the dawn of grace, of the light of the world, of unconquerable hope.

Dayspring’s spirit is caught in Suzy Best’s beloved Christmas poem:

That night when in Judean skies the mystic star dispensed its light

     A blind man moved in his sleep and dreamed that he had sight.

That night when shepherds heard the song of hosts angelic choiring near

     A deaf man stirred in slumber’s spell and dreamed that he could hear.

That night when o’er the new born babe the tender Mary rose to lean

     A loathesome leper smiled in sleep and dreamed that he was clean.

That night when to the mother’s breast the little King was held secure

     A harlot slept a happy sleep and dreamed that she was pure.

That night when in the manger lay the Sanctified who came to save

     A man moved in the sleep of death and dreamed there was no grave.

And dayspring’s spirit brings to mind the conversion to Christ of the authentically pious Blaise Pascal.  Of this remarkable French scientist, philosopher, and mathematician, William L. Hendricks has written, “It would be overly dramatic, but not without a kernel of truth, to say that everyone who has had an injection, used a thermometer, ridden a bus, used an adding machine, or studied higher mathematics has been influenced by Blaise Pascal” who “was instrumental in the discovery or advancement which made possible all of the above.”  Like Saul’s encounter with God on the Damascus road when “there shined round about him a light from heaven,” Pascal’s experience of meeting God was bathed in the ineffable light of what he perceived to be God’s “FIRE.”  That experience of grace came in 1654.  His account of it was written on a fragment of parchment found sewn into his clothing after his death.  His enlightenment came, his note revealed, “from about half past ten in the evening until past midnight; and issued in “certainty, certainty, heartfelt joy, peace…joy, joy, tears of joy…everlasting joy….”

Does not his experience capture something of the miracle of the new birth?  Does it not communicate something of the wonder of God’s grace?  And does it not radiate something of the glorious light of our God whom James referred to as “the Father of lights?”

Our Creator-Redeemer whose shekinah glory, whose shining presence, incarnated, has come as the dawn to our dark world.

The Dayspring from on high has visited us.

Hallelujah.

Amen

Updated Thursday, July 08, 2004