Pastor’s Ponderings
April 2025
In the Deep Dawn:
A Reflection based on Luke 24:1-12
According to Luke, the women went to the tomb when it was deep dawn.
Many translations say “early dawn” or “first thing in the morning,” but what the Gospel writer Luke is trying to tell us is that it was DEEP DAWN. Bathos in New Testament Greek.
How early is Deep Dawn? I suspect that it’s very early, so early that my Apple Watch, when it’s set to the Solar Graph face, would still say “NIGHT” and not yet “TWILIGHT.” I imagine that it’s when there is still no discernible trace of sunlight.
Retired Presbyterian pastor and poet Jim Lowry has a poignant description of Deep Dawn. He writes, “Deep Dawn is that indefinable time between darkness and light... that time when the promise in which you believe is true; or the promise in which you believe is a lie.”
Deep Dawn is when our faith is tested. Deep Dawn is when we are so despairing that we cannot imagine any way forward.
And yet the Deep Dawn is also when our minds are flooded with memories. Sometimes the memories are haunting, but other times the memories give us hope. The women at the tomb are told to do just one thing: Remember. Remember what Jesus told you. Remember how Jesus fed thousands in the wilderness.
Remember how Jesus healed people and stilled the storm. Remember Jesus’s extravagant forgiveness and overflowing love. Remember that Jesus said he would die and be raised again to life.
And we can remember all the people who have been Jesus to us over the course of our lives. We can remember how Jesus healed our bodies and spirits—even if it wasn’t the healing we expected--and how Jesus gave us new life. We can remember the resurrection stories that aren’t always very straight-forward. I think of a friend who shared honestly about their addictions and how they got drunk and high in the hours following their baptism at age 50. It would be nearly another decade before sobriety took a stronger hold.
As we remember these honest—if not straightforward—stories of new life in Christ, we can say, with so many other witnesses, “I know that Jesus lives because he lives in me.”
I look forward to celebrating Easter Sunday (April 20) with you, and all the Sundays before and after.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Jack
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