When the darkness closes in

But You, O Lord—how long?  Psalm 6:3

Yesterday I led a devotions at work for our monthly staff meeting.  And the book we are working through...something like “Diary of a Desperate Man,” asked, “What is the hardest thing God could ask of you?”  

And the examples were of Abraham offering up Isaac, and good old Elijah, which I just read in one sitting last week, and there were no end of hard things that God flat out told Elijah to do.  I really did not want to go into the dreaded unnamed questions we might be called upon to answer, “Speak, LORD, your servant is listening.”  So the folks around the table shared hard bleak moments that God had led them through, except, like Joseph’s inexplicable years in prison, these were not just moments.  But long dark nights, long Daniel-in-his-lions’-den-nights when, each of us shared this cry of David, “But You, O Lord—how long?

And sometimes, like Joseph, we get to share the backside of the story, the ever-after side of the story, and sometimes, we simply don’t.  The dawn sorts of leaks in through the windows, we get up, brush our teeth and wonder.  But His steadfast love led us through the shadowed valley.  And that truth girds our loins for the next moment.  And the next.  Because those dreaded unnamed moments are waiting for us, part of the story, the long messy story of redemption.

How long? How long must we sing this song? 

How long? How long?

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die

The real battle yet begun
[Sunday, bloody Sunday]
To claim the victory Jesus won
[Sunday, bloody Sunday]
On Sunday, bloody Sunday

Still I will say, Blessed be the name of the LORD.