Light That Learned to Be Warm

Sunlight travels ninety-three million miles through the vacuum of space, and for every one of those miles, it is invisible. No color. No warmth. No shadow cast. In the cold silence between the sun and Earth, light exists as pure energy — real, powerful, and utterly beyond human experience. An astronaut floating outside the International Space Station can watch the sun blaze against the void and still feel the killing cold of space on the shadow side of their suit.

But the moment that same light touches Earth's atmosphere, everything changes. It scatters into the blue of a Tuesday morning sky over Kansas. It warms the face of a child waiting for the school bus. It bends through a glass of water on a kitchen table and throws a tiny rainbow across the wall. The light does not stop being light. It simply enters a medium where human beings can finally experience what was always true about it.

John tells us the Word was with God from the beginning — eternal, creative, sustaining all things. And for ages, that Word blazed in fullness beyond our reach. Then, in a particular town, in a particular woman's arms, the Word became flesh. Not less than God, but God translated into skin and breath and hunger and tears — a medium we could touch.

The Almighty did not dim His glory. He entered the atmosphere of our humanity so we could finally feel His warmth.