My wife and I have driven two hours north, into the hinterlands of northern Pennsylvania, to explore a park we’ve never visited and catch the fading loveliness of fall foliage before it’s gone.

I had wanted to photograph the classic reflection of the blaze of color in water.  This image gave me that and more, with its unique split-screen effect caused by a natural dam in the stream.

Light is always an attraction for my creative eye.  That’s even more true during this brief, colorful interval between the baked hues of summer and the bleak grays of winter.  But today, light is also in mind because of Isaiah’s revealing of the promised Servant of the Lord:

(God) said to me, “You are my servant,
    (the true) Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”  (49:3)

The word “splendor” literally means beauty and in other places in the book is translated glory.

It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”  (49:6)

Like light in a dark space, his saving work is to radiate out from Israel into a world of unbelief.  And the nations will come, inexorably, to that light.

The afternoon sun, catching the brilliant yellow leaves, has a magnetic effect on me.  It draws me, frequently causing me to stop and soak in the beauty.  It’s hard to turn away from it.

We finish our walk. I suggest we try another trail.  After a short drive, we’re once again in the glorious woods.

That's when the shooting starts.  At first, it is just a pop! In the distance.  My wife and I wonder aloud at the sound.  We hear another.  Then a much more pronounced bam!

Suddenly it dawns on me: this is hunting season.  Perhaps it was not my smartest idea to take us on a hike at the edge of a park surrounded by game lands – what, with me all in brown, wearing my favorite antler cap.

Even in my actual, unnaturally blue clothing, this was no laughing matter.  I know from my hunter friends that they take safety seriously. But still, accidents happen.  For the first time ever in the woods, I feel unsafe. 

These are not the shots I hoped for.

My fear is a powerful reminder that the Servant, Jesus, came into our world knowing full well the danger and rejection that awaited him.  Verse 7 of the same chapter says that he will be “despised and abhorred by the nation.”  John, in the opening of his gospel, says the same thing:

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  (John 1:9-11)

Jesus knew the price he would pay to redeem the world.  There was a cost to bring the light.  His death was no accident.  The forces of darkness were “gunning” for him. Yet, it was God’s eternal plan.

Earlier, as we passed through a pine grove on our first walk, I raised my phone to the sunlight streaming through the trees and try to capture the effect.  Only later, when viewing my photos, do I see the cross in the center of the illuminated woods.

How apropos.

Love of that depth is the light that will draw the world.

Jesus, thank you.  For giving us the glory of sunlight in autumn woods.  But even more, for giving us the beauty of your sacrificial love.  You are the light we long for.

Reader:  Have a favorite shot of light in the woods?  I’d love to see it!

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