Northern Lights, Impossible Things

I’ve never seen the Northern Lights. I hear they’re spectacular if viewed under the right circumstances.

Hearing about and seeing for yourself are different things. One requires a lot more faith to believe in, whereas the other involves a firsthand encounter.

The stories surrounding the birth of Jesus are filled with a mix of personal encounters and people hearing rumors or second-hand reports.

Take the shepherds, for example. Watching their flocks, when all of a sudden, angels, songs from heavens, light breaking in through the midnight gloom. A spectacle.

Did you or I see that happen? Nope. Does that story help me make sense of the world and locate the particular narrative about Jesus’ humble birth in a larger, cosmic context? Yup.

Advent invites us to step out in to faith, to trust that fantastic things can appear in the night sky and open up a whole new way of seeing the world.

This is the same thing, at least for me, that stories of the Northern Lights do. They evoke wonder as I consider their impossible beauty. I do trust they exist — and I’d love to see them for myself. But because I haven’t, it doesn’t diminish their beauty. In fact, in their absence, I’m invited to listen more closely to the stories of those who have glimpsed their wonder, hoping and leaning in as they share what it was like.

You can get a good sense for the beauty and truth of something by the story people tell about it and the fruit this story produces. People who have seen the light seem to tell really good stories

Peace,

Seth