Light Before the Sun
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”Genesis 1:3 (KJV)
On the first day God said, “Let there be light: and there was light.” But the sun doesn’t show up until the fourth day: “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.” For three days there was light without a sun.
It is a small detail, and it tells us something big. Light doesn’t come from the sun first. It comes from God. The sun is a lamp he hung later.
The Bible ends where it began. In the new Jerusalem, “the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Jesus said it himself: “I am the light of the world.”
Some seasons feel like the sun has gone out. The job is gone, the diagnosis came, the person left. But the light was never the sun’s to begin with. The one who made light before the sun is still the light.
Read it yourself
Read Genesis 1:14–19 and Revelation 21:22–25. List what the city in Revelation doesn’t need, and why.
What “sun” have you been depending on for light, and what would it mean to look to Christ instead?
Jesus, you are the light of the world. When the lights I depend on go dark, be my light. Amen.