Tag: Night

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When heaven is silent.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

You don’t let me sleep. I am too distressed even to pray! I think of the good old days, long since ended, when my nights were filled with joyful songs. I search my soul and ponder the difference now. Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will he never again be kind to me? Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he slammed the door on his compassion? Psalms‬ ‭77‬:‭4‬-‭9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The psalmist, Asaph, records this Psalm while Daniel was in the midst of Babylonian captivity. As you can see, the author was under great distress over the state of the nation of Israel and left with a ton of unresolved questions. These types of psalms are raw, unfiltered, yet for the reader’s sake, find a commonality in suffering.

Praying to God, begging God for sleep, kindness, love and to follow through with His promises. We have the advantage of history and the whole story, but for folks that lived through the 70 year experience- it must have been a nightmare to find God when heaven was silent.

The psalmist asks questions that many people ask when going through difficult times. Has God rejected me? Will I ever see good times again? Is God’s love, His presence, mercy, grace and compassion GONE? When one is in the dark, it is so thorough, so permeating that it feels like it will never end. This is the shadowed world of darkness, the desert fathers and mothers post New Testament termed it, “the dark night of the soul.” And many of them concluded that God invites some into this season. Jesus faced similar, the Apostle Paul was blinded for three days and spent a month out in the desert sorting out his soul. It looks frightening and most I know would think it crazy to be in a situation like this let alone take up God’s beckoning to go willingly. Yet, we all know folks who are suffering. Those who have been given a death diagnosis, those who have lost everything, those who feel lost and abandoned.

I was just reading Job yesterday, not an easy book nor life lesson to comprehend. Job suffered immensely and survived heaven’s silence. Did God reject the psalmist? Was God’s love lost forever? Did God’s promises fail or did He forget to be gracious? No, No, No and No. But it was so real and lasted long enough for the psalmist to lose sleep and run out of words to express the deep trauma he felt.

We are promised in so many places in God’s Word that we are never far from His presence, and there is no place on earth where one could hide from Him. David declared that even in the valley trail that leads between the mountains of Israel, a canyon so deep and long that some places never see the sun. When one walks through this valley of shadows taking on the appearance of death, that one should fear no evil, because God’s shepherd’s rod and staff are still very much with us. Thou art with me! It’s the most important lesson to learn! In Psalm 139:11-12, “I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.” The truth to hold onto is that Heaven may be silent for the night, but God’s presence is very much near and very much real. The sun will rise again. And the Son did rise from death’s darkness! May joy come to you in the morning! Ps. 30:5.

Prayer

Dad,
I have been in some very dark moments, terrifying, soul shattering situations. Yet, even though I sat in the long lingering of night and darkness that felt like it would not end, I never felt alone. Quite the opposite! I physically felt your comfort. Your peace was palpable even when I could not sleep and words did fail. The sheer panic of feeling trapped and left with no options, was unnerving. I held on to you and you held me tight. You were with me in the darkness. Thank you for your everlasting presence. Thank you for your mercy to carry me when I felt like I was drowning in darkness. You are so good to me. Amen.

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Dumb Human Tricks of pretending Darkness is Light!

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” Ephesians‬ ‭5:6-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬


New Living Translation’s attempt to communicate Paul’s intent uses the word, “fooled,” but really it’s don’t be apatáō – deceived, using tactics like seduction, giving dis­torted impressions and luring into deception. And we do so with kenos: empty, worthless, of no value, words. It’s a if Paul knows how humans justify our behaviors by just word-vomiting all over each other. Ah, yes, we spin and wordsmith just the right phrases and repeat them so often that we begin to believe our own lies.

It all begins by lying to ourselves, doesn’t it? We’ve got to. We know it’s wrong. Or, at least I believe that we have a God-given conscience that tells us we’re wrong, but we want to do it anyways. What else are we going to do? Should we go around admitting we’re wrong and acting foolishly? No! We want to DO WRONG but BE RIGHT about it!

We say to ourselves and others, with as much hubris vibrato we can muster, “I am not sinning, you just misunderstand truth.”

Distraction is the core of magic, right? “Look over here, I’ll prove to you that my behaviors are not bad, they are actually good and helpful to my soul and society.” Then the inevitable, “wouldn’t you love to join me in my own version of truth?” There’s no way I’m going to change my behavior, so I will distort the truth!

Paul kinda says that’s ridiculously silly. He says that’s like calling the darkness, light (probably vice versa as well). Yep, dark is dark and light is light. So to switch them means that you’ve gone mental, or traded a truth for a lie.

So that’s why it’s so important to drag behaviors or deeds of darkness out of the shadows, out of the night and into the daylight! To prop up a good lie, a dark behavior, to force EVERYONE to unilaterally admit it’s true and good – it has to be paraded and propagated in the actual light of day.

The best way to seduce the world into accepting a wrong behavior is to drag that thing into the daytime and get a whole bunch of people to agree that it’s good and not bad, it’s truth and not a lie!

Paul says that God’s light, which is not the daylight produced by the sun, but eternal light that emanates from the Son of God himself will EXPOSE darkness and make everything and everyone see truth. Paul says to BE a believer means there is no deceptively seducing yourself or others with ridiculous, empty spinning of truth.

You stand, full on in the light of Jesus Christ and see yourself as a sinner, exposed but also saved by His grace. And as this light of Christ penetrates our soul, there is no need to lie or deny but allow Him and him alone to SEE us and forgive us.

Prayer

Dad,
Wow, we are so creative to avoid truth! Why are we so good at being bad and constantly convincing ourselves that it’s okay? Are we so determined to get away from you and be “independent” of your goodness that we will spend our lives calling lies, truth and darkness, light? I am really that sinful, aren’t I? Forgive me. Forgive us. It’s so embarrassing to know that these thoughts and behaviors exist in our “freedom” and free-will. Come quickly Lord Jesus, for our sin is great and our deception has gone viral.