Dusk to Dawn
The 2021 Annual Conference theme for the Northwest Texas Conference was Dusk to Dawn.
2021 Theme Narrative
In the middle of the day, darkness covered the earth. The light of the Son dying. Hung on a cross, pleading with the Father. Christ’s final breath, it … is … finished. Darkness surrounded, the temple’s curtain torn from top to bottom, the earth trembled.
The world was left in darkness. Some in doubt and fear and others in the hope of the resurrection promised. The story as they knew it had come to an end. In the ending of the old story and yearning for the new story’s promise, they found themselves in the darkness waiting for the Son to return.
Saturday filled with fear and unknown. You see, darkness is not the absence of light but rather the obstruction of light. With an eclipse, the sun doesn’t disappear; it is just temporarily obscured. The dawn of a new story is on the horizon. Sunday is coming.
In the transition from an old story to a new, we get caught in liminal space. Liminal space is where change happens. It is the space in moving from an old story to a new story. The middle of that transition from old to new is the messy middle – a season in darkness. Fragments of the old story linger, and we desperately cling to them so that we have some security. The season of no story can feel uncomfortable and dark.
We often want to rush to what is new – waiting in desperation for the hope of dawn on the horizon. But where we learn and grow comes from our time in transition and living in the messy middle.
What is the pain we felt wasn’t synonymous with bad but growth or breakthrough? If you take time to exist in the dark, what are you discovering in the darkness? Think about this: Shadows do not live in the darkness. You might immediately think, well, that’s wrong because we always associate shadows and darkness together. But shadows only appear when an object becomes illuminated. We have to work through our fear in the dark, so when it matters, we are out waiting and ready for dawn to tell us something good is coming.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” John 1:5, NLT. Christ’s resurrection restored hope. The dawn of the new story began to arise. It is a story we have told for thousands of years. Awake o sleepers! There is a journey from dusk to dawn, and we still have work to do.
2020 – 2021 has brought several events that transitioned us out of our old story, as the church and in our personal lives. As we wait in anticipation for the dawn, we have learned to transition and do ministry in the messy middle. We have grown through Saturday with the hope of Sunday coming. As the Son rises, we have to weave those newfound stories back into the world. Share the story of Christ’s light in the darkness. How will this new story transform your testimony?