God’s Song in the Night
Watercolour, 2017 Aug, Silent Retreat at Riau Island, Indonesia
Have you ever held your breath in a feeble attempt to stop time when something beautiful touches your heart?
I remember that season of waking up with tear-stained pillows, with many blank pages in my journal for all the times when I have not had the heart to write to God. The day we found out we could not have children, my life became a strange and dark place. Perhaps there were many dark rooms in my heart, but not one quite like this. There was an ache within that I just could not shake off. Day and night, I knocked on God’s door and pleaded with Him only to hear empty echoes that stretched on into the dark void that was my day. No one told me that life doesn’t quite turn out the way it does in my idyllic childhood dreams. Perhaps despair is a lonely journey where only one may walk the path and I was with my night alone.
My mind knows the truth - that if I knew everything that God knows, I would ask for the exact same thing that God has given to me and allowed for me, in both the good and the bad. But my heart could not quite catch up.
Clutching onto the bible, I decided to go away by myself to a remote island for a few days. I spent my days reading the book of Job for comfort, listening to the rustling of the sea waves upon the shores, as the waves of questions within me tossed and turned. The days settled into cloudy, starless nights, the moon nowhere in sight and the shadows of my longings flitted and yearned.
On the final night, the clouds parted and behold, an infinite heaven full of stars afloat in an endless ocean of ink laid before my eyes.
I held my breath. My restless, weary heart fell still. The beautiful stars sang and made off with all my cares and concerns.
Could this be true?
All my unsought distress, anguish and aches were only a splendid backdrop upon which God unveiled the glorious and surprising gift of His presence, just like the beautiful stars glittering across the night sky right before my eyes.
“ He heals the broken-hearted & binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of stars,
He gives to all of them their names”
Psalm 147:3-4
He doesn’t take away my darkness but He sings me a song of light through the stars in the night. He doesn’t take away my heartache but He gently draws near to me. He doesn’t give me what I want but He gives me what I did not know I desired the most - Himself.
At night, His song is with me. (Psalm 42:8)
A strong compulsion arose within me to pick up the paintbrush and palette and although I did not previously paint, the desire to do so welled up within me. As I dabbed paint onto paper, my hands were helping me to connect what I was seeing with my heart, and I felt even more awed by a God who is here with me.
God gave me a song to sing in my dark night.
And Him, I shall sing until the day breathes and the shadows flee.
