You might not know it from the weather, but Friday was the first day of spring.

At the building where we live, that meant they finally took down the Christmas lights.

The landscaping company came out to spread mulch and seed and plant bulbs. Where I work, in Brooklyn, the road crews came to start fixing the potholes that were left over the winter from ice and salt.

Some people look for the first robin of spring. In New York, you look for the first road workers in hard hats.

The first day of spring was also the day of the vernal equinox — when both day and night were equal length. In the weeks to come, the days will get longer, and the nights shorter, until we reach the start of summer, in June, and the process begins to reverse itself.

But for now, the days grow brighter. Every day brings us more sun – more radiance. More light. And by a happy coincidence, on this particular weekend, we celebrate Laetare Sunday: the Sunday of rejoicing. We’ve crossed the threshold of Lent, the halfway point. Our journey toward Easter nears its end.

I’m reminded of novelist Anne Rice’s memoir, which describes another journey, her journey back to Christ. It is titled, fittingly, “Called Out of Darkness.” Rice chronicles her own drift toward atheism, her radical youth at Berkley, and how she gained international fame writing about the occult and vampires and the closely entwined worlds of good and evil.

But what is most moving comes near the end, when she writes of being “called out of darkness,” and returning to the light of her Catholic faith.

It happened slowly – but also unexpectedly. She realized that she was, as she described it, “Christ-haunted.” And on a December afternoon in 1998, she felt the powerful urge to return. She wanted to go back to the faith that she had left — but that had mysteriously not left her.

“I wanted Him,” she writes. “I wanted to be with Him, and talk to Him, and kneel before Him, and open my soul to Him. I loved God,” Rice says, “and I wanted to go back to Him.”

Soon after that experience, Anne Rice stopped writing about vampires and began writing about the life of Christ. She felt herself drawn to the light.

Looked at another way, what came through all the light…was love.

It is a love greater than we can even imagine.

“For God so loved the world,” John writes, “that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.”

It is a love that gave everything for us – and that finally penetrated Anne Rice’s heart, and scattered the shadows.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds us that a beautiful byproduct of that love…is faith.

“By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you,” he says. “It is the gift of God.”

On a December day 11 years ago, just in time for Christmas, Anne Rice received that gift.

It is offered to all of us. Are we willing to accept it? Are we prepared to draw back the curtains and let in the light?

Lent is a time for us to ask those questions – and to take stock. Where have we failed? How have we fallen short? How have we put distance between ourselves and God?

It helps to remember this: we are people who have been marked.

Last month, in the middle of an ordinary week, over three thousand people came to this church to have their foreheads stained with ash. We may have washed the ashes away, but the memory of that stain is still there – a very human stain, a mark of our humanity, and our sin.

The ash reminds us of our past. But the light we hear about today is the promise of our future.

The nights grow short. The days become longer. Our planet draws closer to the distant star that causes the earth to warm, and life to return. Light is coming back into the world.

Indeed, the light of the world is about to dawn.

Are we prepared for it?

Are we prepared for Him?

[Originally published, in slightly different form, in “Connect,” the preaching resource published by Liturgical Publications.]