The Night Shift Ends

Maria Delgado worked the overnight shift at Mercy General in San Antonio for eleven years. She clocked in at ten and clocked out at six in the morning, moving through fluorescent-lit hallways while the city slept. Over time, the darkness became normal. She ate dinner at midnight, grocery-shopped at three AM, and hung blackout curtains across every window in her apartment.

Then her schedule changed. Her first morning shift started at six, and when she stepped outside at dawn to drive to work, she froze on her front porch. The sun was cresting over the live oaks on Flores Street, turning the dew on her neighbor's lawn into a thousand tiny fires. She had lived on that street for seven years and never once seen it in the morning light.

"I didn't even know it was beautiful," she told her sister later. "I thought I knew my neighborhood. I only knew it in the dark."

Paul writes to the Ephesians with that same breathtaking contrast: "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light." Notice he does not say they were merely in darkness. They were darkness. And now, awakened by Christ, they see everything differently. The street has not changed. The neighborhood has not moved. But when the Light of the World shines on you, you finally see what was there all along — and you wonder how you ever lived without it. "Awake, O sleeper, and Christ will shine on you."