THE SONG IN THE NIGHT

Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 79

THE SONG IN THE NIGHT

By the

Rev. D. Gardner Miller.

In a perfect picture of a sleepless night, the psalmist, in the lyric we call the 77th Psalm, tells how he lay awake, his mind so beseiged with anxieties that even the very thought of God made him moan. In the night hours he stretches out his hand, but no answering hand meets his. “In the night is my hand stretched unweariedly forth, but my soul doth refuse to be comforted when I think of God, I moan.” (Aly quotations from the 77th Psalm are taken from the “ Psalms in Alodern Speech,” by J. E. APFadyen.) To him it seemed as if someone deliberately held his eyelids up so that blessed sleep was kept at bay. Restless and speechless (“ When thou boldest mine eyes awake, and I am restless and speechless”) he tosses until, almost unconsciously, he enters through a little gate that leads him to tranquillity of mind.

It is the gate of meditation. Instinctively the anxieties that broiled in his mind were set on one side, and into his heart there crept a voiceless song as meditation led him back on the way God had led him. “I think of the days of old, call to mind the ancient years. I commune with my heart in the night, I muse with inquiring spirit.” As he recalled the wonders of God and the way He had led His people throughout their chequered history, he realised that his own present troubles were so magnified that they had almost distorted the mirrored face of God in his own soul. I will muse on all Thou hast wrought, and meditate on Thy doings.” It was as he thought and meditated upon what God had been to him in days gone by that his “ song in the night ” became jubilant. “ Will the Lord cast us off for ever, and will He be gracious no more? Is His love clean vanished for ever? Is His faithfulness utterly gone? Hath God forgotten to be gracious, or in anger shut up His compassion? ” The very questioning- at the heart of his song is the answer to his dire need. History is a wonderful antidote to pessimism. Looking back, the psalmist sees the mighty workings of Jehovah. “ Thou wast a God who did marvels, Thou didst show Thy power to the world.” Even Nature, - in all its wildness and beauty and incomprehensiveness, tells with eagerness the story of the Creator's control.

In Thy way, 0 Lord, through the sea, in Thy path through the mighty waters, Thy footsteps were all unseen.” But no sleepless man could ever be content with mere history and with the marvels of Nature. He must be sure of the personal relationship or else life is vain. And so - it is that, as he penetrates further into the silences of meditation. he sees the perfect picture of the Divine relationship, “ Thou didst guide Thy folk like a flock.”

No wonder, as he lay sleepless, did meditation take him by the hand and lead him to the quiet place (the green pastures and the still waters), where he saw with marvellous clarity, in a moment of time, the Shepherd God going before His people, all of whom He knew by name. No wonder, as he slipped through the gate, did the spirit of memory touch the chords of his heart until the music of the song of remembrance filled him with a peace and a jubilation that made the sleepless night the threshold of paradise.

To the saints throughout history has God always come in the night watches, when the clamorous tongues of day have bayed like unleashed hounds in the clustered shadows. If we will but let Him, He will come to us too and turn our anxieties into a song. To meditate on God and His ways while you wait for sleep to lift the latch of the gate of dreams is the surest way of unravelling the tired mind, to prepare the body for the next day’s demands, and to make the soul receptive to the gentlest touch of the Spirit. Happy are we if we can sing even if we are caged in anxiety. To turn trouble into a song is to make the distressing things of life minister to our well-being. A quiet mind is the result of meditation, never of quiescence. The song in the night! Our Lord and His disciples sang a hymn (from the Psalms, which is the Jewish national song book) ere they started on their walk along the ominous and deserted streets that led to the gates of the Garden of Gethsemane. It was near midnight and soon the flickering lights of the lanterns and torches of His enemies would stab the darkness and circle round that little band.

Think not ye that the song the Master sang -would sustain Him in that dread hour! The arrest did not stifle the song. The outward circumstances could never destroy the inward peace. To sing ae He went forth to die was surely significant. The man who can sing in the face of death has no fear of its dread terrors.

Jesus sang a song in the night. His Spirit passed through the little gate, where the anxieties and troubles of life, the shortcomings of friends and the malignancy of enemies could not follow, and there He found His Father waiting to sustain Him. But the night passes and the morning comes. And the heart that turned the anxieties into a song welcomes the morning, for the morning means a new day and a new experience of God’s care, for “ He careth for me.”