THE NIGHT HOURS

It is often in the dark hours of the night, when sleep is a long way off, that I have my most anxious thoughts.

I love the quietness of the night hours; no ringing phones, no unnecessary conversation, no interruptions. It is in the night hours that I do some of my best praying, some of my best thinking…and my most intense worrying.

It has been years since I have slept through an entire night; I just don’t do that anymore. I often go to bed and sleep two or three hours and then I am awake. The worst thing for me is to just lie there and I have learned that I need to do one of a short list of things:

1. Stay in bed and pray. I know this will come as a shock to some, but sometimes I don’t want to pray—I’m not that spiritual! And so…
2. I get up and read until I get sleepy again.
3. A few times I have turned on the TV. Television is bad enough in primetime but in the middle of the night, you might do better to study the weave of your carpet.

In the quietness of the night, anxieties that we keep at bay during the day are free to run rampant in our minds. Perhaps it’s the daytime activities that keep us occupied and away from the minefields of anxiety and worry. Anxieties are often based in reality but can become overblown. In the night hours, our unrestrained minds seem to magnify the potential problem to unrealistic ends.

But it is also in the night hours that I have many of my most intimate encounters with God. The same quiet hours that find me with my guard down with the potential of anxiety overwhelming me are also the moments when I am most open to free-flowing and intensely personal encounters with our Heavenly Father.

It was in the night hours when the young boy Samuel (1 Samuel 3) heard the voice of the Lord, and at first it frightened him. The temple was quiet at night; it was never silent like that in the daytime. When Samuel heard the voice calling his name in the still of the night, at first he thought it was Eli the priest calling him and he quickly ran to him. Eli was a corrupt priest who hadn’t heard God speaking for a long time, so he didn’t make the connection with God and he sent Samuel back to his bed. It happened a second time and Eli’s response was as dull-witted the second time as it had been the first. Again, he sent the boy back to his bed. When it happened the third time, Eli realized that the boy was hearing something and maybe, just maybe, it was the voice of the Lord. Eli told Samuel, “Go back to bed and if you hear the voice again, say this, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears” (1 Samuel 3:9).

Samuel heard the voice of the Lord say, “Samuel, Samuel!” and this time he did as Eli had told him. “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” God then spoke a very dramatic word to Samuel about the cleansing of the priesthood in Israel and, specifically, how it would affect Eli and his corrupt family. What Samuel misunderstood as a call from his mentor, and Eli mistook as an interruption in his rest, was actually a call to an encounter with the Lord. It was Samuel’s first encounter with the Lord and the first time God had spoken to anyone in Israel in a long time. Samuel did not have the experience and understanding to initially know the voice of the Lord when he heard it. Eli’s corruption had caused him to lose his sensitivity of spiritual hearing; his disregard of the voice of the Lord in the past had caused him to treat this word of the Lord with little regard.

Could it be that interruption in your sleep is not the result of too much coffee or too much heavy food late in the day or the cares of life pressing in on your needed rest? Could it be that the Lord is reaching to you and nudging you awake with an invitation to come and spend time with Him? Could it be that He has a word for you? Could it be that He is hungry for fellowship with one of His children? Or do we relegate our time with Him to the 15 minutes in the morning or the evening when “we have time for Him”?

I love the night seasons, when all is quiet and I am vulnerable and hear Him speaking!