Discovering the last of the daylight on a winter evening

The work day is over, and I know my children are waiting for me at home. I gather my briefcase, purse, and keys and head out to my car.As I’m walking across the parking lot, I sense that something is different, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Suddenly it occurs to me. Off in the distance, hovering along the horizon, there’s still a bit of daylight left in the sky.

Light.

That’s what I’ve missed—almost without realizing it, certainly without voicing it. It’s what I have been longing for since the start of the new year. As the lights and colors of the Christmas trees and decorations have disappeared, they’ve left a dark void in the bleak, cold winter. They’ve left us in darkness.

But somehow, on these mid-January evenings, the daylight is lasting just a touch longer. The sky is holding just a little more light.

It’s not much. It’s just a whisper of the sunshine that filled the sky earlier in the day.

Still, it’s enough. It has to be enough. Because it’s what we are given.

I pause and drink it in, marveling at the colors in the sky that’s usually a deep black. The purply sky doesn’t count as a sunset. The sun itself has already slipped below the horizon. But that glimmer of light remains.

It’s just a taste of daylight, just an echo of what we experience on a sunny day. And yet somehow, perhaps because it’s just a remnant, it seems especially valuable.

After a long day, many of us may feel a little like that early evening sky—not at full energy or full creativity. We’re fading. But we still have something left to give.

“If I ever become a saint, I will surely be one of ‘darkness,’” Mother Teresa said. “I will continually be absent from heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”

May we continue to seek the light and find ways to bring it to others.

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