Psalm 139:1-12 (NIV)
1 You have searched me, LORD,and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.”
I landed in this Psalm in my quite time this week and the words, “even the darkness will not be dark to you” have been in my mind ever since. How great is our God that the darkness cannot even stand in His presence. When He began creation, He created the heavens and the earth but it seems that the darkness was already there. He didn’t have to create it. No, it was the exact opposite; He had to create the light. The first recorded thing He said was, “Let there be light.” (Gen 1:3) Isn’t it funny how the darkness was built in, but the light had to be created by God? It seems to me that this is still true of life today. The dark times just happen don’t they? They are built into life-no need to be created. But in His time, when God starts moving, the first thing He does is create the light. When God starts to move in our darkness, the first thing He will say is, “Let there be light.” This light reveals to us the truth of the situation, or it shows the next step in the situation, or it just simply takes away the darkness we feel inside.
Our problem is that the darkness is dark to us. There are times when the storms of life are so dark that we cannot see our way out, and the darkness is so very, very dark, at least to us. But a part of God I don’t think I will ever understand is that, as the Message translation of the Bible puts it in verse 12, “It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.” I don’t think that I can grasp that the dark and the light are both the same to God. To me they are so vastly different, but God sees every detail of my storm and perhaps does not distinguish between the stormy days and the sunny days, because He can see things that I cannot see. They are just days to God: if we could only see those stormy days through His eyes. The problem is that the darkness is dark to us, and unfortunately, it is rare that I truly see much of anything through God’s eyes, especially when I first start to look. That’s why Psalm 27 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” And that’s why II Samuel 22 says, “For You are my lamp, O Lord; The Lord shall enlighten my darkness.” And that’s why Micah says, “Do not rejoice over me my enemy; When I fall, I will arise; When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” And that’s why there are so many other verses that tell us that the Lord will be our light. We need Him to be our light, and in that need we can see one of the reasons for the darkness. If it wasn’t for the darkness, I’m not sure how much I would lean on God at all, and it’s those times of leaning on Him that I find myself as close as I ever get to my Savior. There is a sweet spot with the Lord that we simply cannot find without the stormy, dark days. There is something in ou humanity that causes it, and though I don’t understand it, I know that every person who wants to walk closely to the Lord will spend some time in the storm.
And so my challenge for today is this; are you leaning on the Lord in your times of darkness? Is He truly your light and your salvation? Do you believe with all your heart that when the time is right, He will speak over your darkness the words, “Let there be light?” Do you know that, even when you cannot see the way, that He sees every detail and that He is guiding your steps, even when you are afraid to take them? And lastly, do you trust Him? Do you trust Him to walk you through each broken day that lies ahead even when you cannot see where the path leads? When you are afraid, remember that He’s got you in His grip and that “the darkness is not dark to Him.” Hold on my dear friend, the Light is coming… Hold on.
