Joy Comes in the Morning

Perhaps the storm does get the worse before it ends. Perhaps the midnight is the darkest before the dawn. Perhaps the sorrow does precede the joy in the morning. But what if joy does not come in the morning? What if the best we can say is, maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow turns into another tomorrow. A month, a year, twelve years of tomorrows. Morning has not come yet.

In the night, in those wee hours when even the moon wanes weak, feet stumble and bump in erring directions.

"Tomorrow. Someday," we declare, trying to placate our little worried weary wonderings. But dangers lurk, masked by our fake, placating "hope."

Our "tomorrow" or "someday" can hide a complaint and a discontent.That is, "I hate today. I can't do it. Lord, you HAVE to make something different happen. I can't go on. I can't do life. Surely, surely, you will change something. You will intervene. Now."

The problem is that it is demanding, commanding of God. Once again, I have a small god--a god not big enough to be completely sovereign, completely good, completely free, completely God, God even if the dawn doesn't break.

The second danger is to live in fear of the "what ifs." Instead of that "There will be a someday," we lapse into the "What if there is no healing? What if next week is as bad as today? What if my muscles only continue to atrophy? What if the screaming doesn't end? What if the blood cell count only worsens? What if the storm never ends? What if the morning never comes?"

The what-ifs begin to wax larger than God, or rather, god. Our true God is the God greater than the "what ifs." He can still intervene. He is still God, even if the "what ifs" come to pass. The "what-if perspective" is also a small view of my life and of eternity. As long as our days are, as long as this week has been, as long as this suffering is, as deep as our cries of "How long, O Lord!"--they are a blink compared to eternity. Day will dawn, with a glorious new body transformed like his.

A third danger is despairing complacency. Hope becomes too dangerous. Too much work. Too tired to hope. To0 scared to hope. The darkness becomes home. I turn my back on the morning.

Not content with the sin-warping of this world, but not discontented. Pleading, but not demanding. Hoping, but not basing all on my perception of that hope. Resting, but striving. This is the hard call in times of long term suffering. To always pray for that "joy comes in the morning," but to find joy in the night as well. To laugh at the night bats of worries or the monsters in the closet, not out of some grand masochistic or sadistic hubris, but because even in the dark we see One for whom the dawn has already risen over death, eternally.

Our God is big. The God who is more infinite than the depthless scope of the dark, big enough for the tomorrows if the healing does not come, big enough for the what-ifs, big enough to have the courage to hope.

And so I still belt out in wobbly notes, with tears streaming down my face, those age-old hymns, "Though Satan should buffet... sea billows roll... Even so, it is well with my soul..." "Be thou my vision... Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light..." "Christ the Lord is Risen today....Where, O death, is now thy sting?...Fought the fight, the battle won... death in vain forbade him rise.... " "Because he lives, I can face tomorrow...." "Amazing Grace.... through many dangers, trials and snares I have already come / Tis grace that brought me safe thus far / And grace will lead me home." I belt them out in defiance of the death that is working in my body, creeping in my spirit, eating my soul. My God is bigger. And the Risen Christ, the Morning Star, my Hope of Glory, my Tomorrow,  lives in me.