MorningtideSample

Awaiting Morning

I’m sure we can all relate to the feeling of yearning for a deep problem to be put right. It could be for many reasons: perhaps a season of illness, separation from loved ones, difficulties at work or school.

As we started to see yesterday, God uses light and dark throughout the Bible as imagery illustrating good and evil, life and death.

In this short excerpt from Matthew, Jesus is put to death and the presence of the Father leaves Him. As that happens, isn’t it so vividly appropriate that darkness should also physically cover the land? For the disciples too, this was the beginning of a season of darkness. They’d seen their friend and (they thought) Messiah murdered, and they went through enormous fear and confusion in the following days. Can you imagine what it was like to watch everything you’ve been living for put to death on a cross?

Throughout the Bible, in fact, people walk through times of darkness crying out for the morning to come. Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted as he died, or the especially bleak Psalm 88, are examples of times when life is more darkness than light.

Perhaps you’re currently in a season when it feels like night seems to last forever, and you’re longing for morning to come. If that’s you, why not prayerfully read through the Psalms mentioned above? You’ll be in good company; people at all times and all places have known something of walking through a season of night - even King David. If you’re not in a dark place yourself, then it might be worthwhile spending some time praying for somebody close to you who is?

But above all, He knows what it’s like; He endured the worst of it so we won’t have to. As Tim Keller said:

Jesus is saying to us, ‘I suffered something that you’ll never understand; that’s why I suffered it, so you’ll never understand it’ *

Remember you’re praying to a God who hears you, and who knows exactly what it’s like to walk a dark valley. And He shepherds us through it (Psalm 23).

We’ll leave you with some words from our track, ‘Father of Light’:

“For the darkness will turn to morning, And morning to noonday bright

I’ll praise the one who is holding me fast Father of Light”

* Sermon preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City, on May 3, 1998