Morning by Morning

I had to drive a good long way out in the boonies while it was still dark this morning—about 0330. I’m assuming it was still cloudy, because there were no stars, or moon. It was just really dark. I had my high beams on in case a donkey or a horse decided to play chicken—I wanted to give myself as much warning as possible. Thankfully, none of them decided to jump on my truck, and I escaped having to pick mane hair out of my teeth.

I accomplished my task in just a few minutes and started heading back. It’s a 45 minute drive back to civilization from the place I had to visit and I was mad because I had to listen to 93.1 on the way and that station makes me shriek every time I have to hear it for more than 10 or 15 minutes.

I don’t know if you’ve ever driven through the desert on a cloudy and moonless night, but all you can see is the swath your head lights cut through the darkness. That isn’t much at all.

When it started raining I had to swear a little under my breath because I hate driving in the rain, but then a thought occurred to me:

It might be raining now, but it probably won’t be in the morning.

Morning by morning, new mercies I see…

As I write this I’m glancing over my shoulder out the open door, and eastward as far as I can look, there is only darkness. The sun has yet to lighten the sky.

But I know the sun is just waiting for its moment.

I think life might be a little like that sometimes. There’s rain, and darkness, and it sucks to drive through that.

The thing about rain, though, is that it does eventually pass. Maybe it’s a couple showers. Maybe it’s a storm that lasts for weeks, months, or years.

I went through a period like that, and it wasn’t until it was over that it occurred to me the sun had just been waiting for its moment.

I spent several years as part of a ministry at my church in San Diego that spent quite a bit of time praying for (and with) people going through many different types of sexual brokenness issues. I’d always carried a bit of heaviness around that kind of thing myself, and while I did well enough in that ministry, it often made me alternate between feeling sad, and helpless, and sometimes even angry.

My life prior to joining that church had been pretty dark, even after I came to faith. It seemed like it was always raining, and I couldn’t shake it, no matter what I did.

Yet there was something about all those Monday nights spent in prayer. All the stories told, and the tears cried. All the breakthroughs experienced. Finally I realized they spoke to me so profoundly because while I was part of the team, I was also going through a refining myself. It took a lot of time. I was dealing with my own brokenness.

I would brush my arms through clouds like sticky cobwebs—they didn’t part.

But the sun was waiting for its moment.

It came in the form of a beautiful young woman from Arizona.

The woman who would become my wife brought the sun into my life, along with the realization it had been there all along. I just kept turning my face from its light and warmth.

I try not to do that anymore.

It isn’t that there is no longer darkness; there is. There’s rain, too. Sometimes a lot of it. Faith isn’t about not going through those things. No.

It’s about knowing—no matter how long the darkness or rain lasts—that the sun is just waiting for its moment.

Jesus promises it will come.

And look what happened.