I have always been a night owl, and it is easy for me to stay up until two or three in the morning. I am fortunate to be one of those persons who can function well on just three or four hours of sleep for days in a row, and in fact I find that too much sleep makes me groggy and unfocused. So given all of this it should come as no surprise that I have had plenty of experience with "all-nighters." Even now
in my late thirties I stay up all night at least a couple of times per year. The spring semester of my last year in divinity school, when I was 30, I had ten all-nighters in about a six week period. That was a bit much, but an occasional night spent working away at something isn't a big problem for me at all.
This verse from the Psalms has always seemed beautiful to me but I never fully understood it until I put it in terms of an all-nighter. As a night owl, the morning is my least favorite time of day. I drag myself out of bed and slowly get back into the day's action. I envy those people who can get up at dawn and hit the ground running, because I'm certainly not one of them. Because of my aversion to mornings I also find them depressing. So if something is deeply bothering me I don't find myself imbued with a bright and shiny attitude when I awake -- not at all -- if anything I feel more fear and anxiety as I wake up than at any other time in the day. It is then that I feel the most vulnerable and the least prepared to deal with life's troubles. So where is the joy?
But thinking more deeply not just about the verse, but about the entire psalm, I realize that David, the psalmist, wasn't just talking about life's anxieties. He was talking about those rare and horrible times that force us into an entire night's worth of worry and despair, those times when our soul most pitifully and helplessly cries out to God.
To you, O Lord, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me!
O Lord, be my helper!”
David knew those times. He feared for his life, he felt utter abandonment, he broke God's own laws and knew contrition. He had been through it all in his life. And he knew that despite the immense pain and agony that life can produce, our God can wipe it all away and replace it with joy:
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
And yet the most famous night anyone in the Bible ever spent without sleep did not turn out this way. When Jesus prayed through the night in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood in his anguish, he was not rewarded with a joyful daybreak. He was instead faced with arrest, slander, beatings, and crucifixion. And here again we see another example of how Jesus Christ went through suffering so that we may have those moments of God's grace, those mornings where we are freed from the shackles of our sinful world and provided a glimpse of God's love and glory. For let us remember that the verse above is but half a verse; the entire verse makes it clear that what David fears here is not an earthly power or an earthly problem, but God's own anger. From that, through Jesus' death, we can also be preserved...
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
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