Daily Affirmations - Day 5 - Faithful God - Our Light in the Darkness
- Alisa B.
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Day 5: Our light in the darkness
Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of His servant? Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God (Isaiah 50:10).
It seems easy to trust when all is bright, but really it is just as hard, only we can more easily deceive ourselves, when physical well-being makes us comfortable. We are less conscious of our own emptiness, we mask our poverty from ourselves, we do not seem to need God so much. But sorrow reveals our need to us. Other props are struck away, and it is either collapse or Him. We learn the vanity, the transiency, of all besides.
Jesus in His darkness rested on God, and in all His sorrows was yet anointed with the oil of gladness. In every pang He has been before us...
It is to trust, not to anything more. No attempts to stifle tears are required. There is no sin in sorrow. The emotions which we feel to God in bright days are not appropriate at [sorrowful] times. There are seasons in every life when all that we can say is, ‘Truly this is a grief, and I will bear it.’
What then is required? Assurance of God’s loving will sending sorrow. Assurance of God’s strengthening presence in it, assurance of deliverance from it. These, not more, are required; these are the elements of the faith here called for.
There are times when the most that we can do is to trust even in the great darkness... We may find all that we need, and more, in God.
Have we to mourn friends?
‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne’ (Isaiah 6:1).
Have we lost wealth?
We have in Him a treasure that moth or rust cannot touch (Matthew 6:19-20).
Are our hopes blasted?
‘Happy is He . . . whose hope is in the Lord his God’ (Psalm 146:5).
Is our health broken?
‘I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance’ (Psalm 42:11; 43:5).
‘The Lord is able to give thee much more than these’ (2 Chronicles 25:9).
How can we face the troubles of life without Him? God calls us when in darkness, and by the darkness, to trust in His name and stay ourselves on Him. Happy are we if we answer:
‘Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines . . . yet I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation’ (Habakkuk 3:17).
...There are all weathers in a year. And the highest hope and nearest possible approach to joy is sometimes ‘Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness’ (Psalm 112:4). Our lives are sometimes like an Arctic winter in which for many days is no sun...
It is in the occupation of heart and mind with Jesus that joy and peace come...Though now there seems a long wintry interval between seed time and harvest, yet ‘in due season we shall reap if we faint not’ (Galatians 6:9).
Excerpted from MacLaren's Expositions
Comments