One early morning when our son was 3, he came to the side of our bed and stood by my head until I cracked one eye and told him it was still dark outside so he needed to go back to bed. “No,” he replied, “I looked out the window and saw the first glimmer of dawn.” How can you argue with a 3-year-old who reports to you the “first glimmer of dawn” (a phrase we later realized came from The Jesus Bible Storybook, which was at that time our regular bedtime reading)?

Christmas tends to be associated with night: “Silent night, holy night,” the little town of Bethlehem in “deep and dreamless sleep,” the shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. We attend Christmas Eve services and celebrate in the darkness, candles aglow. Easter, on the other hand, is a morning celebration, all about sunrise and light. But I’ve been wondering what the dawn was like on that first day in which the world awoke and Christ Jesus, the tiny King of Kings, was dwelling with us.

The carol “Silent Night” tells about “radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace.” This past summer I arose early one morning to see the sun rise over Lake Michigan. There was a moment of first light — the “first glimmer” — but then a sustained period of gradual lightening across the sky. The patterns of sun, light and cloud changed every few minutes as the day dawned. Redeeming grace, born to us on Christmas night, often dawns on us slowly, gradually, the light emerging a little at a time. I can’t take in the radiance of the Son all at once, but over time it dawns on me: the truth of redeeming grace!

This Christmas morning I plan to get up early, find a patch of open sky and celebrate the “first glimmer of dawn” — Christ the Savior is born! — and the lifetime of redeeming grace that dawns every single day after.

The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light … on them a light has dawned …

Matthew 4:16

– Katie Nordine Toro
PBA Class of 1996
McLean, Virginia