A New Dawn

I find it intriguing that seemingly unimportant memories are often part and parcel of very significant events in our lives. I remember like it was yesterday the dawning of the day that was to be March 5, 1969. There I am in my 1962 blue Volkswagen Beatle buzzing across the brand new railroad overpass in North Bay, Ontario. Just as I reach the summit of the convex bridge the sun is rising on the horizon. It is a beautiful spring day and temperature is in the mild range. I can still remember the high pitched sound of the tiny air cooled rear engine as I shifted into fourth gear. Despite the fact I had slept very little in the last two days, I never felt more alive on that day as compared to all the days in my young twenty-one years. I was driving to my parents' house for breakfast. Shortly after midnight on that very day, I had become a first time father and now the day dawned as a spectacularly beautiful red, yellow and pink sight directly in front of me on the eastern horizon.

Lozanne, who had suffered her way from girlhood to womanhood by way of a very difficult and poorly supervised labour of thirty-two hours, was finally resting comfortably and I had spent hours admiring through the nursery window our beautiful new-born daughter. In those days, fathers were considered and treated as a nuisance to hospital staff, were not allowed in the delivery room and actually holding your own baby was something you could do at home after a four or five day stay for both baby and mother in the hospital. As you would expect, my specific and sympathetic memories of those thirty-two long hours of labour are with me to this day. Just as powerful is the memory of the dawning of that very special day in 1969. The pleasant and vivid memory puts me in mind of Peter’s rendering of the coming of Jesus Christ in 2 Peter 1:16-19:

16 ¶ For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.

19 ¶ And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;

After two very dark nights over four decades ago in St. Joseph’s Hospital, a beautiful light came shining through. That day dawned on a completely new life for both Lozanne, Tamara and I. The morning star of a new baby rose in our hearts. Life would never be the same again. The same can certainly be claimed on a much grander scale, of course, with the coming of the brilliant light that also shone in a dark place that was and is this world; the coming of my savior and my Lord Jesus Christ!

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