The sunrise wears many hats. In the winter, it’s a woolen one of hope to protect from emotional frostbite.

Some northerners suffer from cabin fever or downright depression and so...the sunrise takes on special meaning for a few reasons.

For starters, it’s bright and light and Old Man Winter isn’t. He’s a bit more stark or white. It’s a contrast and it literally wakes you up from those endless dark nights.

For another thing, the sun moves across the horizon if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to see that path. That gives spring-lovers a sense that the sun is a great bigcalendar in the sky.

The sun also metaphorically speaks of something new and that’s just what spring gives us in the form of flowers and gardens and trees.

And the big yellow ball gives us more and more heat that gives us hope for lighter jackets.

Whether literal or metaphorical winters, we can’t just gaze and wait. But the sunrise sure feels like God’s post-it note during those tortuously long months of winter.

PORTAL TO HEAVEN: The winter sun’s promise of spring reminds us of God’s oath that The Son is coming soon.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’… Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'

Acts 1:10,11 NIV, Matthew 28:18-20 NASB

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