The Sunrise You Live In

Some Christians treat their faith as a threshold they crossed once. *I prayed the prayer in college. I went to the camp. I made the decision. I'm in.* Proverbs 4:18 has a different image. *But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.* Dawn isn't a moment. Dawn is a process. The first light is barely visible. Then a glow, then a horizon line, then color, then the whole sky. By full day everything is illuminated and you can hardly remember what dark was. None of it happens all at once. All of it is the same sunrise. Kent's sermon Sunday on salt and light could have left you feeling like Christian witness is a binary — either you're shining or you're not. Proverbs 4 corrects the picture. The path of the righteous isn't on or off. It's brighter and brighter. The dawn becoming day. That means a few things. It means you don't have to "have arrived" to be in the light. The first light counts. It also means you don't get to coast — Christian life is a sunrise you walk further into, not a horizon you crossed once. And it means the light isn't ultimately yours; it's the sun's. Your job is to keep walking forward in it, not generate it from inside. Tomorrow, you gather with people who are also at various points on the same sunrise. Walk in further. The light is going somewhere. So are you.