On a Dark and Sleepless Night…

For a dark and sleepless night, consider these words of comfort and counsel: “Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.” No doubt most of us at times have turned our troubles over in the restless hours of the night. And in the dark and sleepless hours, troubles are multiplied and magnified.

If our loved ones are out and overdue, it isn’t difficult to imagine dark and dire things. And then, finally, as they return, well and whole, the load is lifted, and likely we wonder why we so much feared and fretted.

The shades of discouragement and despondency are darker and deeper in the hours of night, and small things seem large, and large things sometimes seem insurmountable. In the restless hours of night it isn’t difficult to imagine all manner of maladies and malignancies. Indeed, on a dark and sleepless night, with all its tossing’s and turnings, we could churn up many troubles inside ourselves.

Job pitiably complained that “wearisome nights are appointed to me. When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise, and the night be gone? And I am full of tossing’s to and fro unto the dawning of the day.”

But despite all real or imagined difficulty and discomfort and discouragement that come with darkness, the dawn does come, and the load does lighten with the coming of daylight. Even when out worries are real, and even when they don’t altogether disappear, the light of day tends to lift and lighten them.

Thank God for light, for the dawn of each new day, for the reassuring brightness of the sun—for much of what disturbs us doesn’t seem so darkly serious in the day light as it did at night. And because the darkness distorts, because it deceives and conceals, in darkness we should make no needless decisions and reach no hasty conclusions, but wait to look at our problems in the light—”as the morning breaks and the shadows flee.”