Weeping Stays the Night

Eleven months, and people stopped coming at about week six.

That is not an accusation. She has thought about it a great deal and she has decided it is not an accusation. People have their own lives and six weeks is longer than most people can sustain anything, and several of them did more than she would have done in their position.

But there is a fact and the fact is this: nobody has been in this house after ten at night since about the middle of the second month.

And the verse she has been sent, or told, or had read at her, more than any other, is the one about joy coming in the morning.

It was said at week two by somebody who genuinely meant it. It was said at week nine by somebody who was tired of the subject. It was said in month five, in a kind voice, by a woman who has never once been in this house at three in the morning and who was gone by nine.

And here is what she has never said back to any of them, because there is no way to say it that does not sound bitter.

You are quoting me a verse about a morning. I am in the eleventh month of a night. And every single one of you went home.

Read the length of the night in the verse

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

Look at the word endure.

Weeping may endure for a night. Endure is not a word for a short thing. You do not endure a moment; you endure something that goes on, that has to be got through, that costs something to stay inside.

And the psalm gives it a whole night. Not a bad evening. A night, which in the world that psalm came out of was a real unit of darkness with watches in it, and a man in it was awake for hours and hours with nothing happening.

So the verse itself allows the night its full length. It does not hurry it. It says the weeping endures, which is an honest verb, and it puts the morning at the end where mornings actually are.

You are inside a night that Scripture itself gives full length to. That is what the verb in that verse does, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an honest reading of it safe, because Scripture calls Him the Comforter and comfort is presence inside a thing rather than a shortening of it.

What happens to that verse when it is quoted at week nine

Now let me name what has been done to you with a true sentence, because it has been done a great deal and nobody has acknowledged it.

That verse is true. Joy does come in the morning and I am not going to take it off you.

But a promise about the end of a night, quoted to somebody in the middle of one by somebody who is about to go home, functions as a way of closing a conversation. It says: this has a resolution, so we do not have to sit here any longer.

And you have received that eleven times, and every time it has arrived it has also arrived as a departure.

You are not bitter for noticing that a true verse can be used as an exit. The word says weep with them that weep (Romans 12:15), which is the actual instruction and is the one nobody has been given, and it is the Holy Spirit who stays in a room past ten at night, because He is not the sort of comfort that has to be home by nine.

Who has been in the house at three

Here is the thing I most want to leave with you, and it is not about the morning.

There is somebody who has been in this house at three in the morning every night for eleven months.

That is not a sentiment. The Bible's claim about God is that He does not slumber nor sleep, and that darkness and light are both alike to Him, and that He is nearer to the brokenhearted rather than further, and none of that is a claim about the morning. It is a claim about the night.

So while everybody else was correctly and understandably at home asleep, the room has not been empty.

You have not been alone in this house at three in the morning once in eleven months. Scripture says the LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart (Psalm 34:18), and nigh is a position rather than a promise about outcomes, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a presence like that felt in a room that has been empty of everybody else since week six.

And I will keep it honest, because you have had enough of the other thing. Nothing here says the morning comes soon and nothing here tells you how long the night is. I do not know, and neither did any of the eleven. What is settled is that the verse gives the night its full length, and that somebody has been in the room for all of it.