The goddess of Dawn (Eos) in Greek mythology was beautiful and loving. Dawn was perpetually beginning, always new, eternally young. One day Dawn went to Zeus to ask for immortality for her beloved Tithonus, but she forgot to ask that he could also keep his youth. When the request was granted, Tithonus lived on and on, but grew evermore aged. In his pathetic state, feeble and decrepit, he became a tragic figure of Greek literature. Though he lived in the presence of Dawn, life and happiness had passed him by. The Greeks made up this myth to express what seemed to them an unalterable fate: with each new dawn we ourselves just grow another day older. Dawn can be new; we cannot.
But the Greeks did not know Jesus!
They did not know that a day was coming when “on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned” (Isa 9:2, as fulfilled in Matt 4:16). They did not know that all human history would be forever changed in a garden early one morning as dawn began to break and the sun’s rays illuminated an empty tomb. They did not know that Jesus’ power could enable his followers to make every day a fresh new day, by putting off the decrepit old man of sin (Eph 4:22-24). They did know the joy of having the day dawn and the morning star arise in their hearts (2 Peter 1:19).
Most of all they did not know that one day there will be a glorious Dawn in heaven! God will be the light and the Lamb will be the lamp for that ultimate land of new beginnings. In a place where God will make all things new, where Jesus is our Morning Star (Rev 22:16), we shall always embrace the Dawn.