Last summer, my son and I backpacked in the Wind River Range in central Wyoming.  Midway through our trip, we rose extra early to prepare for what we expected to be a lengthy hike over and across the Continental Divide.  When we got out of our tent, the sun had not yet risen over the peaks below which we were camped.  The air was still cold, the lake by which we had pitched our tent still shrouded in shadow.  So we waited.
     For what did we wait?  We waited for the sunrise, for the sun, that brilliant and life giving orb of light to rise over the peaks and bathe our camp in warmth and radiance.  As the day was still young, we waited awhile, packing up our camp, preparing breakfast, always watching for hints of the coming light.
     Then it came.  The sun seemed to explode atop the ride, bursting with rays of brilliance and wonder, its multiple filaments of splendor spreading over and across the waiting land.  We rejoiced:  the light had come.
     "For the people who walk in darkness," wrote the prophet Isaiah, "will see a great light (Isaiah 9:1)."  Isaiah speaks, in metaphorical terms, of Messiah, the one who would come to shower light upon an Israel darkened by disappointment, abandonment, and sin.  He speaks of the Christ who would enlighten and save all those who longed for him.  He speaks of the light that would come.
     On the third Sunday of Advent, we remember this fact of Messiah's light, how, like the sun exploding over a frigid mountain ridge, Messiah--Jesus--has brought us light, the light of enlightenment, the light of hope, the light of salvation, the light of meaning.  It is the light for which all of us wait, the light for which all of us, our lives spent in endless quests for meaningfulness wait, the light that if we embrace it, embrace it as ferevently as we did the warmth of the sunrise on an alpine morning, will change our lives forever.
     Once we touch this light, we'll never be the same.