Waiting for the Morning
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”
(Psalm 30:5)
Not this morning, though. And for the families of the five officers who were shot and killed last night, not for many, many mornings to come.
It’s coming apart at the seams, this country of ours. I see that more and more with every passing day. I read Isaiah’s cry that “justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14), and it looks like a contemporary observation instead of a millennia-old lament.
I look at the cursings of Deuteronomy 28 and I shiver. Madness. Blindness. Confusion of heart. “And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you” (Deuteronomy 28:29).
My heart aches. It aches for the lives that were so coldly and mercilessly snuffed out last night; it aches for the families who must go on without their loved ones; it aches for a world where officers are gunned down while standing to protect a group spewing vitriol against them.
Madness. Blindness. Confusion of heart.
But we chose this, didn’t we? We chose this every time we legislated God out of our schools, out of our laws, out of our work, and out of the public’s line of vision. We chose this every time we trumpeted that truth is relative and morals are personal opinions. This is the world we wanted. This is the world we demanded.
Welcome to the future.
My wife and I stayed up into the early morning hours, watching the news as this most recent tragedy unfolded. It was terrible. Awful. Unspeakable. And yet all the while, there was one thought I couldn’t get out of my mind:
It’s going to get worse.
It has to. This nation has chosen its path, and it’s one that can only end in destruction (Matthew 7:13).
There are going to be wars and rumors of wars. There are going to be famines and pestilences. There are going to be offences and betrayals and intense hatred, lawlessness will abound, and love will grow cold (Matthew 24:6-12).
There will come a time of “great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21, emphasis added).
Mankind’s darkest hour is still ahead of us. It’s going to be darker than anything else in human history. Darker than the Inquisition. Darker than the Khmer Rouge. Darker than Stalin’s purges. Darker than the Holocaust.
Are you prepared for that? If that hour comes in your lifetime, are you prepared to face it? Can you stand in the face of that darkness and hold fast to the truth given to you by God?
It might be centuries before that hour comes. It might come tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you’re prepared for it today. What matters is whether you’re clinging to the word of God “as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19), for “the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12).
The darkest hours of mankind’s night are still ahead, and we must be prepared to face them, whenever they might come. And we can do that, because we have a promise to hold on to—that no matter how dark this night gets, joy will come in the morning. God will return to set things right. This troubled world will know peace, the broken hearts will be healed, and God will wipe away every tear. That’s what the dawn has in store for us. We just need to make it through the night.
But please, my Lord God—let the sun rise soon.
Until next time,
Jeremy
