Written by Ngozi Maduagwu
English theologian Thomas Fuller penned the quote, “It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.” This is analogous to the psalmist’s declaration in Psalms 30:5 that, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” These are very dark times that we are in, and if one is not careful, it could become easier to try to adjust one’s perspective to see better in the night than to look for the hope of the light.
Scripture records two very dark nights which provide a glimmer of hope that we can look to today as a shadow of the light to come. The first is in Exodus 12 which gives the account of the night before the children of Israel left Egypt; the very first Passover. Could you imagine being a little child in a home when instructions had been given to remain indoors after the blood of a sheep or goat that had been slaughtered at twilight was placed on the doorposts and lintels of your home? How about having to eat a meal prepared in a special way yet dressed like you were ready to move to a new neighborhood immediately afterward? Or even more bizarre, doing all this while hearing the sound of wailing all over Egypt coming from homes where firstborn sons of the Egyptians had died in the final and deadliest plague of all – on a very dark night.
As a child, you may have thought this was a chaotic night and maybe even sorrowful or somber, especially because all this was happening in darkness. However, for the adults, the perspective would have been a little different because they knew what was going to happen in the morning – they were leaving the slavery of Egypt! The cries of their oppression of over 400 years had finally been heard by God and He was answering them with His mighty outstretched arm. In light of such revelation, that dark night took on a whole new meaning.
Fast forward a couple thousand years later and there was another dark night after another 400-year period of hardship for the children of Israel – the night the Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed (which also happened during a Passover celebration). When the chief priests, officers of the temple guard, and the elders came to arrest Him following the lead of Judas, the betrayer, Jesus said, “Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour – when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:53). For the disciples, who were still spiritual children at the time, this was a very dark night. In that moment, they were convinced that they would never see their Lord and Messiah again and have sweet fellowship as they had done for the past three and a half years. This night was so long it lasted three days – one day for every year that He had spent with them.
Yet… “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb” (Luke 24:1-2). Even that dark night had an end… on a particular morning. That morning became brighter and brighter for fifty days until the full light of revelation came at Pentecost and filled the disciples in the person of the Holy Spirit. This turn of events made them such bold witnesses of what they had seen and now fully understood such that we today, have become the fruit of what they witnessed.
Where does all this leave us in our dark night? Where is our light? Where He has been since that fiftieth day after He was sacrificed as our Passover lamb – seated at the right hand of God the Father in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:20 – 21). And guess what, we are right there with Him!!! According to Ephesians 2:6 – 7, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
So again, where does this leave us in our dark night? Seated in heavenly places with our Savior!!!
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