Morning By Morning
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872
This lovely painting by Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, painted in 1872, is often considered the opening of a major movement in art history. Monet is sometimes called the father of Impressionism, perhaps also the first of the modernists. This painting is a favorite of mine because of the beautiful depiction of sunrise. Sharon and I have had a print hanging in our bedroom for years. Sunrise is loved by poets and artists. It is cherished by the writers of our holy scriptures. Morning by morning, we see the faithfulness of God’s love.
As the darkness begins to dissipate in this painting, the sun shows itself with the first glimmer of light. The harbor is coming back to life. It’s time to begin anew. The scene is uplifting, renewing, anticipatory, expectant. So often the sunrise hits us in just these ways. It’s time to turn from the darkness into the light.
We hear from the voice of Jeremiah in Lamentations:
The LORD’s love is surely not exhausted,
nor has his compassion failed;
they are new every morning,
so great is his constancy.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (REB)
From these lines we get one of the great hymns of our faith, composed by Thomas Chisholm in 1923. Even after the darkness and suffering we still can sing at sunrise,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Great is thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
Often, as I rise early in the morning and head to my study where I can see the sunrise, I find myself mummering these lines. Can you believe it? Each morning we see the new light and the new life. What promise. It reminds us of that great gospel claim that Jesus has come to bring us life and light.
Listen to Lillias Trotter, British painter and missionary from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as she experiences this new light for the day?
It was in a little wood in early morning. The sun was climbing behind a steep cliff in the east, and its light was flooding nearer and nearer and then making pools among the trees. Suddenly, from a dark corner of purple brown stems and tawny moss, there shone out a great golden star. It was just a dandelion, and half withered – but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head. And it seemed to talk, standing there – to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these lives of ours.
I have been pondering, as I have mentioned in earlier blogs, the post-Christmas story that “the child grew big and strong and full of wisdom; and God’s favour was upon him.” Luke 2:40 (REB) Imagine, as Trotter does, that sunrise is a signal of the light of the world we find in Christ. Imagine that we are like the dandelion soaking up as much of that light as we can until we too become shining and radiant. Imagine turning to the light and catching all the glory we can hold.
In my pondering these days, let me be reminded, with Hosea,
Let us strive to know the LORD,
whose coming is as sure as the sunrise.
He will come to us like the rain,
like spring rains that water the earth.
I believe I have never lived through darker times than we are now experiencing. The litany is long and wide. There is no one scapegoat nor one source. As we absorb the news of the day, we absorb with it all the hatred and destruction, the despair and hopelessness, the fear and anxiety.
We long for the sunrise, don’t we? We feel so small and helpless up against the forces at work, and yet there we are in our little boat, or out there like the dandelion, turning to the light. Even in all the darkness, we know the Lord Jesus is always there. We know because, morning by morning, new mercies we see. Morning by morning, we see again the sunlight.