Nearly every morning I watch through our west-facing windows as the rising sun illuminates the hill, barn, and outbuildings of the farm across the road. It starts as a pale gray, then brighter and brighter until the direct rays of the sun fall on the hill. The line of sunlight then marches down and across the landscape until all is illuminated. If my day’s work is done early enough in the evening, I can watch the sun set behind the same hills it illuminated that morning.

When the last sliver of the sun disappears each evening, I don’t worry that it won’t reappear in the morning. It has always come back, and I’m confident that it always will. Even on days when ash-colored clouds blanket the entire sky, I can still tell when the sun rises. Nothing can completely block its light.

The Egyptians thought that the sun god Ra traveled in a chariot through the sky during the day. In the evening, Ra would die and go to the underworld, and was then reborn each morning when the sun rose. Almost all ancient cultures had their own sun myths, and some even worshipped the sun as the source of life, light, and food. Ancient peoples carefully followed the path of the sun throughout the year and attached special significance to certain times such as the summer and winter solstices. In the British Isles, the forerunners of the Celts built many stone rings such as Stonehenge that were oriented to the direction of the sunrise as it moved north and then south throughout the year. To the ancient mind, the world was filled by spirits and gods that charged nature with vitality and purpose.

Today, astronomers say that the sunrise is simply caused by the rotation of Earth upon its axis. We moderns think a scientific explanation is better than believing Apollo carries the sun across the sky in his chariot, but we lose something in this shift. What was once a miraculous event caused by a divine hand becomes common and mundane; the impersonal laws of the universe ticking away like a clock as they have for thousands of years.

Nearly two thousand years ago, a group of women came to a tomb in the morning when it was still dark. Their hearts were heavy as they remembered how the man they believed was the Messiah had died as a common criminal only a few days earlier. As the sun rose, flooding the world with light, they saw an angel, clothed in light and sitting atop the open door of the tomb. The angel told them, “He is not here; for He is risen, as He said.” Exulting in their new hope, the women ran to tell the disciples the good news.

To the Christian, the rising sun on Easter signifies the life and hope that followed the dark despair and death on the cross. But why should we confine the significance of the sunrise to one day a year? Each morning, the rising sun shows us the daily mercies and love of the Lord. It promises new life and rebirth after the chilling darkness of night. Even if the rising of the sun is driven by the cold and uncaring laws of the universe, those laws were put in place by a warm and loving God. A God who loves us so much that He sent His only son to die a cruel and sacrificial death on the cross. Sin and darkness now flee in the holiness of the True Light. Every morning when the common miracle of the rising sun illuminates the dark landscape, remember the resurrected Son of God who lights the world.

It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed,
because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning:
great is thy faithfulness.
The LORD is my portion, saith my soul;
therefore will I hope in him.
Lamentations 3:22–24

Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his,
and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
For his anger endureth but a moment;
in his favour is life:
weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning.
Psalm 30:4, 5