Light travels at 186 thousand miles per second. That means
it travels about six trillion miles in a year, so that’s the distance in a
light year.
The sun is “only” about 0.000016 of a light year (93 million
miles) from Earth; its light reaches us in about eight minutes twenty seconds.
After the sun, the next nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is
about four light years away, so its light takes about four years to reach us.
Light from Polaris (the North Star) travels 680 years before
reaching Earth.
That’s about how many years passed between the times in
which Isaiah and Jesus preached. Isaiah lived in a time when the darkness of
empire—the Assyrian empire, in the case of eighth-century Judah—was creeping
into the land. He looked forward to a time when the Lord’s light would drive
the darkness away.
Isaiah said,
In the former time he
brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the
latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the
Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a
great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has
shined (9:1b-2).
Matthew says about Jesus,
He left Nazareth and
made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and
Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be
fulfilled: "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea,
across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles the people who sat in darkness have
seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
light has dawned." From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (4:14-17).
Isaiah’s hopes for the coming light were fulfilled in other
ways through the years—the people returning from Babylonian exile in the late
sixth century no doubt saw that event as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s words, for
example—but for Matthew and the early church, Jesus’ ministry was their most
complete fulfillment. In Jesus, the light for which Isaiah looked had come.
Some stars that are visible to the naked eye are as far as
two thousand light years away, so it’s taken two thousand years for their light
to get to us. Here we are, living two thousand years after Jesus. Do you ever
wonder how much of Jesus’ light has made it to us? How can we let our lives be
more open to the light of Jesus’ love and grace so it will drive away the
darkness of pride and power that sows dissension and disunity?
It didn’t take two thousand years for such issues to
develop. Jesus’ original disciples dealt with the darkness that accompanies the
quest for power with its accompanying pride and jealousy. And it was only about
twenty years after Jesus lived that Paul was imploring the church at Corinth to
overcome its divisions (1 Cor 1:10-18). So it’s not surprising that we still
have trouble letting the light drive away our darkness.
But light is stubborn. It keeps going. It keeps coming.
Today’s powerful telescopes can detect the light from
objects as far as 10-15 billion light years away. When scientists see the light
from those objects, they see light that has been traveling for ten to fifteen
billion years.
This post first appeared in a slightly different form on Coracle, the blog of NextSunday Resources.
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