In the Night Season

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Psalm 30:5

My last post was written at a moment when faith was seeking to hold on to God even though I could not understand the path He was taking me on. For nearly three months I had no answer from God except “Trust Me.” In those dark moments I came to believe God still had a plan though it might not be what I had hoped.

This month I spent a lot of time up north – three separate weekends speaking at our conference women’s retreats and a week in the Upper Peninsula visiting each of our Bible Workers. Being away from the constant busyness in Lansing, provided me with several opportunities to meet with God in new places, and to hear His voice in ways that were more audible and clear. At times it was the peace that seeped into my heart as I saw beautiful pictures in nature like that below.

God also spoke to me through others. Ginny Allen was the main speaker at the retreats. Three times I heard her powerful message called “In the Night Season” where she describes a Job-like experience she had six years ago when her son in his early 30s was killed in a snowmobile accident at their church camp, leaving a wife and two small girls. Six months later she became deathly ill with an e-coli infection in her kidneys. During her 19 days in the hospital she experienced hallucinations due to a medication she was allergic two, a grand-mal seizure, panic attacks, organ failure, and resuscitation when she flat-lined. She shared how God carried her through these valleys. Her sermon title comes from the song “God Leads His Children” where the chorus reads:

Some through the water, some through the flood

Some through the fire, but all through the blood

Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song

In the night season, and all the day long

God is leading us when we go through “shady green pastures, so rich and so sweet” “where the water’s cool flow bathe the weary one’s feet”, but God is no less leading when “sometimes in the valley in the darkest of night” He takes us.

One of my all-time favorite books is Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard which tells the story of Much-Afraid’s journey to the high places of the Kingdom of Love. She wants so much to find true love and her Shepherd King promises her that if she will follow this path she will come to the Kingdom of Love. But at one point He takes her on a detour through a desert. When she realizes that it is going in the opposite direction of the high places she protests that He can’t take her there for He promised to take her to the high places. He asks her, “Much-Afraid, do you love me enough to trust Me? Will you go down there with Me, even though the path seems to lead you away from what I have promised?” She sinks to her knees, sobbing, “I do love you. You know I do. I will go with you into the wilderness. I will trust you to choose what is best for me.”

At that moment she does what she does frequently throughout the book whenever she comes to a place where she must surrender her will to God’s will, she builds an altar and places on it her desires. It consumes in smoke and in the ashes she finds a small stone and adds it to her bag of stones to remind herself of these surrenders. As they continue their walk into the desert, the Shepherd tells her that all of God’s men and women must walk through the desert on their way to the high places for there are lessons that can only be learned here. In this valley she finds a little flower with the name “Acceptance-with-Joy” and she realizes that flower is to represent her. At the end of the book she does make it to the high places, finds that the flower of love has bloomed in her heart, and all those little stones she has collected along the way become jewels.

I thank God for the “night season” I recently experienced. And now the morning has come – I have the answers I sought from God – He inclined His ear to me and heard my cry. Joy has replaced pain and He has put a new song in my heart even praise to my God. He is so faithful!