There’s a certain sacredness when the house is dark and everyone else is asleep.
I stay up past everyone in my home most nights. I rarely go to bed early. I’ve chalked this up to creative temperament for years, but now I think it’s something more.
My feelings and spirit are reaching out past me in these minutes alone. I’m reaching to Him. I’m waiting on Him, listening, experiencing Him closer.
It is in this kind of solemn solitude I can forget about the present, and reach out toward God and eternity.
There’s something deeper going on that can’t be perceived when daylight is shining and endless distractions ricochet in our path. It takes nightfall to push those intruders away so we can finally see, undistracted, just a glimpse of what He truly is.
Like Moses, we say “Show me your glory”. We hide in the cleft of the rock, waiting expectantly for Him to pass by…
Reality isn’t really found in our day-to-day duties, our drab routines. In much of that, God rarely seems present. That’s why most people never touch the divine – they never stop to shut out all the other competitors for their attention.
God is way too gentlemanly, too self-confident to vie for people’s affection. He’s unwilling to jockey for our favor.
The fact so many people seem uninterested in experiencing God has always bothered the evangelist in me. I’d like to believe all can come to God. I still believe that’s theoretically true. But I’m starting to have second thoughts.
I’ve tried in my feeble way to help people see how truly glorious He is, how His glory puts this whole world to shame. And now here in the darkness, I feel His presence around me and know He is near, know He is real. But I’m beginning to realize some people simply will not stop long enough to consider Him, to “taste and see that the Lord is good”.
It’s like trying to serve a fine french pastry to a child determined to have cotton candy at the fair. You tell them there’s something more, that cotton candy is nothing but puffed sugar and food coloring. And yet, they repeatedly bypass the glorious for something that will melt in their mouths in 3 seconds flat.
But God deserves to be savored. To be soaked in during the middle of the night when nothing else can disturb us.
He is that classic film from which we dare not divert our eyes, lest we miss some brilliance to be reveled in. But the rowdy, noisy crowd run on past the classics. They prefer the latest 3-D super hero epic. In their eyes, your devotion to a 75-year-old film in black and white seems curious, maybe backward.
They never imagine they might be the ones lagging behind.
No, I fear I’ll never slow the others down enough to win them, so anxious they are to keep running toward the cliff.
I know I must sound arrogant, as if I think I have all the answers. But I’m merely a man gazing into an artistic masterpiece, unable to look away. My eyes follow His handiwork as one would note the brush strokes on a Van Gogh. I don’t feel smarter or more holy for seeing His glory. I’m simply befuddled no more stand with me amazed.
They’ve opened up the Louvre for free, but there isn’t even a line to get in.
Sleep’s overtaking me now. My humanity limits how much I can stay and watch and wait upon Him. He deserves so much more from me, I know.
But one day, when my sad frame is shed, my gaze will be uninterrupted. I will be taken to Him, into Him. Like a child, I’ll sit there staring up into my Father’s face, mouth hanging wide open in wonder.
No time for sleep there and no distractions. Just like this nightfall now – unending glory, like sunlight shining in the middle of the night.
