The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, Daniel 12: 1-3 is set during a time of great duress for the people of Israel.  Babylon had crushed Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple to dust. The people had been led into exile.

In Genesis 3 God had declared that Adam would return to the dust of the ground from which he had been formed.  Now, in Daniel, resurrection from the dust is announced

Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) saw a foretaste of what the righteous might expect in the resurrection in the glowworm.  “God…has given to the smallest worms to emit from their bodies beams of light in the summer, that natural fluorescence might be a parable of what we expect…He who makes the worm shine luminously will much more illumine the just person.”

Whatever attempts are made to describe the resurrected life we received in baptism and will receive in fullness when Christ returns, will all fall short of what that life will be.  But there does seem to be a common denominator in the descriptions.  Eternal life in the presence of God and the resurrected Christ is most often described in terms related to light.