Do you know this feeling? You wake up in the middle of the night and the darkness magnifies your fears? I worry about work. I fret over the taxes. So many unfinished projects in a life that is getting shorter. And whatever else is going on, it all seems worse in the darkness.
I once gave a Lutheran Hour message, titled, “When God’s Darkness Surrounds You.” Just before the giving of the Ten Commandments, there was terrifying darkness. “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick could on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled…. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly” (Exodus 19:16-19). God surrounded the people with darkness, and they were afraid. Who wouldn’t be?
Let our thoughts about darkness shift. God came to where His people were, not to destroy them but to tell them of His love. God veiled Himself in thick darkness so He could be close, so His people would not die from being close to His almighty holiness but would hear of His love. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).
Can you think of another mount, another time of darkness, when God was frighteningly close? “From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour” (Matthew 27:45). “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh… Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”
Now when I wake up afraid in the middle of the night, I make it prayer time. Give it all to God. Eventually I fall asleep, and when morning comes, the sun rises!