“Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139:12
For the second night in a row, I haven’t slept. The hours ticked by consumed in thoughts.
Last night I went out on my porch and gazed at the stars. The coyotes sang a melodious tune and my little dog snuggled close to me either because she was cold or scared. I felt a lot like her.
From my house in the Northeast Georgia mountains, the sky is clear and the stars are well-defined and visible for miles. At times I believe it is an opening into another galaxy or a passage way to Heaven, and if I could just get close enough, I might glide right through.
When I was a little girl, my sister and I would lie down on the trampoline and watch the stars in the night sky. Sometimes we’d talk, but mostly we were deep in thought. I wanted to become a missionary in Russia. She was going to be a doctor and a movie star. I wanted to write books and work as a journalist in a foreign country. Lightning bugs sparkled above us as we whispered the desires of our hearts. The annoying sting of mosquitoes agitated our arms and legs; but never enough to force us inside.
I remember distinctly a conversation we had. I was probably 12 and she was 15. The night air was unusually cold and the closeness of our bodies in order to stay warm made us appear as one. Her head turned slightly toward me and she asked, “Are you ever afraid you won’t turn out to be what you want to be?”
“Well…I…not turn out to be what I wanted to be?”
My mind raced forward and backward; clockwise and counterclockwise.
“Are you?” I responded.
She adjusted her body. “Yes.”
There are times when the future seems entirely too frightening. We need only to turn to the nightly news – ISIS, hurricanes, earthquakes, bombings, terrorism, deficits, war, moral decay, and the list goes on and on. It makes me want to crawl into my bed and pull the covers over my head and stay there.
But Psalm 139:12 tells us that God is not confused. He sees very clearly in the darkest of times. When we do not understand, He does. When we cannot find our way, He can. When we are scared out of our minds, He is steady.
Psalm 55:22 says from The Message, “Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders—He’ll carry your load, He’ll help you out. He’ll never let good people topple into ruin.”
And in the darkness of my Northeast Georgia home, I felt God smile, as a star shot through the sky. He is the same God Who looked down at my sister and me on the trampoline in 1976 and looks at me on my porch. Darkness is no obstacle – for His light understands who we are. His watchful arm is always there to show us the way.
