Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17
On the fourth day of creation, God ‘made two great lights’. It was given to ‘the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night’ (Genesis 1:16). While day and night were already in place from the first day, the two major luminaries were to govern the divisions of light and darkness. To provide some light during the darker phases of the moon, God ‘made the stars also’. These heavenly lights have always been impeccably dependable. The orderly courses of the sun, moon, and stars have been tracked by man since time immemorial. As we may depend upon a grandfather clock to chime at midday, so the ancients knew when the sun or moon would enter an eclipse, even hundreds of years in advance.
As punctual as these heavenly lights are, their luminescence is not without deviation. The light of the sun, moon, and stars fails us when they pass beyond our horizon. The moon’s light varies greatly as it phases during a lunation. Seasonal changes shorten the length of our days, and dampen the energy which man and his harvests receive from the sun’s rays. Clouds cast shadows over our path, and even the blazing midday sun may depart from us in the mysterious event of a solar eclipse.
While the light and warmth of these lights in the heavens fluctuate in brilliance, and even leave man in darkness, there ‘is no variableness, neither shadow of turning’ with the Father of lights. His warmth towards us does not grow cold with the seasons. ‘Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever’ (Hebrews 13:8). When we believe this, any shadows cast over our path will lift like the morning fog.
The natural man, however, looks to nature as his portion, and the source of his strength. Like the heathen of old who ‘beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness’ and worshipped the lights in the heavens, modern man also worships nature in less overt forms (Job 31:26). As the Egyptians were plagued for their disobedience, the day approaches when ‘the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine’ (Isaiah 13:10).
When God flips the switch on the light He has created and controls, hope will abandon those who have put their trust in the host of heaven. In that hour of thick darkness, only those who have learned from His word that ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all’ will be able to endure (1 John 1:5). In all their experience with God, they have seen that there is no variableness in His love, and no external circumstance will convince them otherwise.
Christopher Sparks