In the Still of the Night

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”  Genesis 15

Okay...not exactly the kind of night time conversation most of us want to have with God.  In fact, a case could be made that what God is saying to Abram is a bit of a nightmare.  Seconds after showing Abram a star-filled night...twinkling and bright...happy with the promise that Abram's family tree will one day grow and blossom...God's words take a troubling turn.  God talks about how Abram's family will face hardship...be oppressed...and Abram will die eventually.  I think these are all topics that keep US up at night.

We face financial hardships at 3 am...we worry about our family in the middle of the night...and we confront our own mortality as we await test results and doctor's phone calls.  If you are ever in a hospital in the middle of the night, when the lights are low and the squeak of nurse's shoes echo off the shiny tile floors; in the midst of the silence often there are a few rooms where the light are on.  Often that person...like Abram...is wrestling with God about the strife of life.  

Barbara Brown Taylor has recently written a book about embracing the night time of our souls.  She makes compelling arguments that all the artificial light we have surrounded ourselves cause us to miss the blessings of night time and darkness.  There is a peacefulness to night.  There are blessings that can only be found in the cycles of the moon.  There are truths that only being in complete, cannot see your hands in front of your face, kind of darkness.  Part of the reason why night is such a helpful teacher is it opens us to our own vulnerability without really being dangerous.  But we don't teach our children how to be comfort with night...believing the stories of fear from the news and clinging to our leftover fears from childhood...and we never quite grow comfortable with being in the moments when our eyes cease to be the dominate sense.

Part of the reason why God shows up so often at night in the Bible is that is when we are most likely to have our guard down.  It is the time when we enter into the thin place between productivity and rest; thin place between conscience and unconsciousness; the thin place between being completely in control and vulnerability.  I invite you to pay attention this week to that thin place.  Barbara Brown Taylor especially names dusk as an important time.  That happens to be the time I am writing this.  So, if you will excuse me, I am going to go outside and seek to be open to the trace of God's grace that might be found in this moment...if I am willing to slow down; stop typing and being "productive"; and simply trust in the God who called both day and NIGHT good!

Blessings ~