Day 20: Psalm 19

You can learn a lot about God from just watching the sunset. Tonight on our evening walk, I was noticing how gradual the fade is from light into darkness.

Every night our walk ends about the time the frogs and crickets are beginning their nightly songs, and it’s a reminder as my day comes to an end, a whole other world of creatures is just beginning. When I was a kid, I was terrified of the dark. This was enforced in every book I read and every Disney movie that I saw. The darkness was always a place where bad things happen. I was thinking tonight about how my own kids are terrified of the night, they are always anxious to get home when they can’t see. It doesn’t help that every adult is twice their size with a looming shadow and a mask covering their face. No wonder we all grow up afraid of the dark. Notice what the Psalmist said:  

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Psalm 19:1-3

The night is a time that reveals knowledge. The darkness is as much a sign of God’s activity as the light is. In the Scriptures, you can learn just as much in the darkness as you can in the light. This isn’t just true in creation, it’s true in the soul. Right now, the whole world has retreated into a darkness. We entered into it with fear, and now we are just wondering when someone will turn the lights on again. We hate darkness. Every best-selling book is about how to avoid darkness and how to take seven steps to constant light. However, in the language of God, the night speaks. In our darkest moments, just like creation itself, night can reveal what we could never see in the light.

Now that we are adults, let us not sit in this current darkness like we did when we were kids. Let us sit in it knowing there is something to learn about God here. Perhaps you have to undo a belief that darkness in your life is your fault, because you have lacked faith. Too much light in creation would scorch the earth and nothing would grow. Perhaps this is a season you learn the same is true of you.

The darkness is where God can cultivate the seeds of faith that were planted in the sun. Listen to the frogs sing. You might hear God speaking to you in a new way.

Jared