In the Morning | Letters to a Samuel Generation
by Rachel Starr Thomson
written May 2005
One of these years I plan to start a new tradition. Every year in February or March—shortly before the visible coming of spring, while the world is still cold and grey—I'll go out early in the morning, light a bonfire, worship my God, and wait for the sun to rise. The purpose? By faith to welcome in the spring, celebrate morning, and look to the rising of the Sun of Righteousness.
When we first turn our hearts over to God, the whole world seems to bloom into summer. Pastures are green; sparkling rivers of water are ever there to slake our thirst. The Shepherd walks where we can see Him and often smiles down on us. The sunlight is gentle and heartening. It's hard to believe that winter will ever come again.
But it does. Every high mountain path leads again into the valleys. As in the far north, months pass in which the sun does not rise. The rivers freeze over, and the blowing snow obscures our vision of the One we follow—even His footprints disappear.
When the sun is long in coming and warmth is a waning memory, when we can see our way to the cross but not beyond it—what then are we, the children of God, to do?
Hold on to hope. David said it best when he called us to sing out of the darkness: “Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment: in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
Believe. In John 9, Jesus healed a man blind from the day he was born. That man, enshrouded in darkness from the moment of birth, could not imagine what it was like to see. It wasn't his ability to envision healing that caused him to be healed, but the compassion and holiness of Jesus! You needn't work yourself into a special state of mind, what we sometimes call “faith,” to be healed. You need only have faith in God—in who He is. Your testimony and mine will one day echo the blind man's: “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”
Spring is coming. The sun will rise. The darkness cannot last forever.
Rejoice. “My brethren,” says James, “count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2). This concept doesn't belong only to the New Testament. Lovers of God have always known that rejoicing was an appropriate response to hardship. As David said, when everything seems darkest, sing unto the LORD and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. So the world has fallen down around you—your life isn't anchored in the world. It never was. God is still there, God is still holy and good; so rejoice! You will overcome.
St. John of the Cross once said, “One act of thanksgiving made when things go wrong is worth a thousand when things go well.” Why? When we thank God in darkness, we proclaim that we are too small to see what is truly happening. The Only-Wise God is still in control, and He has promised to work everything out to our good. When everything spins out of control, we must surrender our definitions of “wrong” and “well” and let God work His greater purpose in and through us.
Trust Him. Trust the Father as Jesus did in Gethsemane; as Paul and Silas did when their praises rocked their prison; as Daniel did from the lion's den. God took each to the brink of death before He delivered them—in one case, He took Him beyond it. The history of God's people rings with the voices of those who trusted in darkness: Jeanne Guyon, who compared herself to a bird singing praises to God from the “cage” of the Bastille; Jim Elliot, whose death in Ecuador at a young age inspired hundreds to go the mission field he so loved; Corrie ten Boom, who discovered that the light of God could still shine in the darkness of a Nazi death camp. This is the cloud of witnesses that surround us, therefore,
“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.”
Suffering is not a strange thing in the Christian life. Jesus Himself did not escape it, nor did He try. Glory only comes after trials; spring never comes without a winter before it. Endure the cross, for it leads to joy. Look unto Jesus, remember His holiness, sing and praise Him. Trust.
The morning will come.
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