I am weary with the pain of Jacob’s wrestling
In the darkness with the fear, in the darkness with the fear
But he met the morning wounded with a blessing
So in the night, my hope lives on

Andrew Peterson, “In The Night“

“It’s so dark out! 😩”

I woke up two days ago and texted that to a friend at 7:13 a.m. And yes, I used that actual emoji.

October. Beautiful leaves. Bright orange pumpkins. Shorter, darker days.

And on that particular morning, it was not only predawn dark but pre-all-day-rain cloudy. Thus, very dark.

“Colors 10 minutes ago,” my friend responded 10 minutes later along with this picture.

Absolutely amazing! I almost ran over to the window and whipped the curtains out of the way. . . and saw a slightly less-dark, cloudy sky than it had been.

“Ooo pretty. We had solid clouds.”

“It was a short time and then cloudy. 7:17 and when I sent it to you 5 minutes later cloudy.”

Now to be honest, I didn’t believe that had ever been outside my east-facing window. She lives in the same town, but several miles away so my thinking was it must have been slightly less cloudy there. I think I grumbled to myself something like, “Those were maybe the colors at YOUR house, but that’s not what I had here.”

I wasn’t in the best mood that dark morning.

Isn’t that how it works? Someone tries to cheer us up and even offer understanding, and we think, “YOU can maybe have hope and be cheerful, but you don’t know what I’M going through.” Maybe I shouldn’t write “we;” maybe that’s just me.

I got Cody off to school and sat down to eat my breakfast. I opened Facebook to mindlessly scroll while I ate and, on the third post I saw, a friend wrote, “Morning dawn” and had posted three pictures of the beautiful sunrise she saw from her house.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, the very next post was another friend posting. . . wait for it. . . yep, sunrise from his house that morning! And five of his friends commented on it with their own pictures of the beautiful sunrise!

Two days ago as I was looking at these pictures, I wrote down random thoughts that were popping up, and I thought of the song that I used at the start of this post, “In the Night.” The verses detail the hardships of various people throughout the Bible, but, ultimately, the singer says that his hope lives on in the night. Then I remembered another song:

“In The Morning”

It’s been a long day, and you did your best
Let go of the past, it’s time now to rest
The weight of the world is getting too heavy
Give it to Jesus, His arms are steady

And your heart will feel lighter
Everything will be brighter
Find peace in knowing
That all will be well in the morning
In the morning
All will be well
All will be well in the morning

How cliche to write that things always look better in the morning. Cliches don’t help me so I try not to offer them here thinking they won’t mean much to you either.

Except maybe that expression isn’t always a cliche. It may be used too much, too flippantly, but what about those times it actually is true? Like when I can only see the darkness so God sends me not one, not two, not even three sunrises but eight sunrises! I missed sunrise that morning. But it was there. And it was beautiful.

Our nights may be long and dark sometimes but in the morning. . .

All will be well in the morning.

Close your lovely eyes
Can you feel the sunrise

JJ Heller, “In The Morning“