“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”
I want to do that, I don’t want to see the shadow, but I love the sunshine, I want to see the sunshine.
It is raining today here in Kaitaia, in the Far North of New Zealand.
Let me tell you about two people, who kept their faces to the sunshine, one came from Germany and the other from England. Both were not only writing about the sun, but also singing about the sun.
SUN
Christian David, who lived from 1690 – 1751 was born in Maehren in Germany and went as carpenter with the Herrnhuter missionaries to Greenland.
He gave us the hymn “Sonne der Gerechtigkeit, gehe auf zu unserer Zeit!” (“Sun of righteousness, shine in our time!”) He says also, “Sun of righteousness ignite the fire of love for the world to see.”
In Malachi 4:2 we read, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.”
John Keble was from England. For ten years he was a professor of poetry at Oxford university. He was also an Anglican minister. He wrote the poem “Sun of my Soul” in 1820. “Sun of my soul, Thou Savior dear, it is not night if Thou be near,” is the first line of the hymn.
Psalm 84 is a psalm of the Sons of Korah and there we read in the verses 11+12
“For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews commands us: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,…”
(Remember also the chorus by Helen H. Lemmel, 1864-1961
