"There's a peace I've come to know
Though my heart and flesh may fail
There's an anchor for my soul
I can say it is well.
Jesus has overcome
And the grave is overwhelmed
The victory is won
He is risen from the dead
And I will rise when He calls my name
No more sorrow, no more shame
I will rise on eagle's wings
Before my God fall on my knees
And rise..." - Chris Tomlin
I first heard that song in a military chapel the heart of Missouri full of tired ACU clad boot camp denizens and a few civilians ministering to them. From that day to this it has ever come to my mind when I feel tired, worn, stressed, sick, worried or discouraged. It's a dawnsong. But what does that mean?
Dawn is for me, a special time of day. I love watching the dawn nearly as much as a loathe the arrangements necessary to be up early enough to see it. Seeing and - when my travels take me to less urban locales - hearing the world come alive always fills me with a sense hope and wonder that has nothing to do with the physical realities of watching the effects of our planet spinning about.
"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it." - John 1:5, New Living Translation
Dawn, you see, is the entry of light into darkness. It is the sudden, glorious intrusion of life - for even in a merely physical sense light is essential to life - into the domain of death. It is hope. It is renewal. It is the possibility of a future. And darkness has no power over it, nor any true understanding of what it is or what it means. It can never lay hold of it, nor appropriate it, nor make it it's own.
Dawnsongs are what I call those touchstones that remind me of what is true in life when my perceptions threaten to overwhelm my perspective. They are, to extend the metaphor, the songs sung to greet the dawn - the one that I know is coming if not the one I can actually see.
This one came to me in the midst of Basic Training for the Army. Basic is, I'm thoroughly convinced, easy for no one and in my own opinion the mental aspect of it is a far more daunting than the physical challenges. In the midst of it the time seems to stretch out forever. It is, in short, a place that can be perfectly miserable for an interminably long time if you let your head get twisted around the wrong way. In that, I suppose, it's not unlike life in general. Peace is increasingly, it seems, a fleeting commodity in our lives and our world and death all too common.
I speak not only of physical death, though that's certainly something that happens. Things die in our lives every day. Dreams die. Hopes die. Friendships, aspirations, plans, confidence, all die sometimes with brutal swiftness sometimes with agonizing slowness. And when these things die we mourn them quietly and bury them and do our best to move on and do without.
"Aragorn looked at the pale stars, and at the moon now sloping behind the western hills that enclosed the valley. 'This is a night as long as years,' he said. 'How long will the day tarry?'"
But Jesus has overcome, and the grave is overwhelmed. By His blood He not only redeemed us from physical death at the end of our lives, but He revoked the power of the grave to take from us the things that make life worth living. More than that, He took the pieces of broken hopes and shattered dreams in His hands wove them together again, better than new.
"Dawn is not far off,' said Gamling, how had now climbed up beside him. 'But dawn will not help us, I fear.'
'Yet dawn is ever the hope of men,' said Aragorn."
Life has a tendency to batter people. In my time I've seen it batter people pretty dang hard. It's a hard thing to endure, either to experience or to watch someone go through. People lose hope because they're so stuck in the midst of their circumstances that they can't see how anything can ever be different. Happens to me, even. I get tired, sick, discouraged that things haven't worked out the way I'd planned or the way I'd hoped. It's a familiar feeling right now, believe me. But the Light hasn't been overcome. The Dawn is not far off. I will hear my Saviour call out to me.
And I will rise.
