Here comes the sun and I say, "It's alright."

I love the sun and I always have. My favorite family vacations growing up were spent playing in the sand and surf along North Carolina’s wonderful beaches and returning home with my hair bleached and my skin bronzed. Riding my bicycle, playing baseball or golf or badminton, swimming at the neighborhood pool or hiking and exploring, mowing lawns for a few bucks a week… my free time was spent outdoors in the warmth of our marvelous sun.

I pity people who live where the sun is frequently hidden behind gray skies. Here in Tucson we have about 10,000 days of sunshine per year. (Perhaps an exaggeration. The actual number depends on your definition of cloudiness—if a single puffy cloud in an otherwise crystal clear sky obscures the sun for 2 minutes, is that a cloudy day? Scientists have come to blows over these things.)

Since the sun shines a great deal here, we’ve invested in photovoltaic solar panels which, mounted on our roof, turn sunlight into electricity and reduce the amount we need to buy from Big Power. Making electricity from sunlight is about as close to witchcraft as you can get, except that it turns out to be a property of semi-conductive materials that God sneakily built into creation long, long, long before we were born.

I have even mounted a solar panel on my camper-trailer, which charges a battery and gives us a little bit of power when we’re off “roughing it” somewhere in the American wilderness, enough power to keep our phones charged, making it possible to ignore the natural beauty of wherever we are camping as we search Google for an even better spot to park our little camper.

Since I’m one of those people who likes to improve on the status quo, and since my camper-trailer battery died on our last outing, and since Tim Taylor of Home Improvement is my hero (More Power!), I’ve upgraded the system and added a second solar panel to the first. And here’s where the story gets odd.

My new solar panel hates the sun.

What do I mean? Well, the way a normal solar panel works is simple: more sun, more electricity. Shade it under a tree and you only get a little power. Let the gentle morning sun warm the photovoltaic chips and you get a little more power. But give it the full, unobstructed view of the blazing Arizona sun at high noon and you get armies of electrons marching double-time to fill up your battery.

Not so with this new panel. It’s like these solar photo-voltaic cells are made out of some alien anti-matter. The more sun it sees, the less electricity it produces. It’s almost as if this new panel is lathering SPF 5000 sunscreen all over itself as the sun rises in the sky.

What I’ve got is an un-solar panel. The little solar-voltaic cells inside might as well be slices of cheddar cheese, for all the good they do.

To say the least, this isn’t what I was expecting. The tech brains at Big Solar are working on the problem and promise to get back to me.

There are people living in Arizona who are susceptible to skin cancer, and you’ll sometimes see them in the heat of the day dressed in long sleeves and gloves, perhaps carrying an umbrella, doing whatever they can to avoid sun exposure. I feel sympathy for them, and given my long history of living out in the sun, it’s possible I’ll be counted in their number one day. For the sake of their health, these people avoid the sun.

My solar panel is sick in a different way. It was designed to love the sun, but instead it hates it. And it made me think: Some of us have that same reaction to God, right? Some of us go through life avoiding God, doing our best not to think about God, living God-averse or God-agnostic lives. God shines his beautiful light on us all, but some of us raise an umbrella and take refuge, we shrink away, we’re repulsed, or perhaps we’re merely disinterested, incurious, satisfied to live in the safe and dim artificial lights that society has erected inside our bubble-encased lives.

It’s understandable, actually. I can remember a time when I was afraid of God. We imagine that it’s very hot under the noonday intensity of God’s presence, at least until we actually experience the bright rays God shines on his people and find that they’re energized by love and mercy and goodness, and that those rays are full of blessing and comfort and truth and nurture and hope.

Some people are not so much afraid of God as they are of Big Religion. Churches can sometimes be places of deep hurt, religious communities are sometimes dysfunctional, families have been known to use God as a threat to tamp down rebellion or a hammer with which to administer injustice. The blame for these perversions of Christianity are laid at God’s feet, where God is expected to answer for the sins and shortcomings of his people.

Answers are demanded of the God who is as grieved as we are over the ways his Word and name are misunderstood, misused, and tainted by association with injustice, malevolence, ambition, etc., etc.

Yet, the truth about God is that he is very good, that he will come near to those who approach him, and that he is ready to embrace those who step into his light.

God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home. —Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen

As the earth experiences life beneath the warm rays of our sun, so you and I are only able to thrive and find the best in life by stepping out of the shade and into the full, midday brightness of God’s presence and love. If you’ve been avoiding God, you’ve been avoiding a relationship with the one who made you, the one who loves you, the one who is your true and good Father.

Shrug off your overcoat, wipe off the sunscreen, ditch the umbrella, and dare to walk out into the bright daylight of faith.