Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

For one, we must learn to weep. This is not something that comes naturally for many of us. We have to let ourselves notice, admit, and experience sadness. And we resist this in all kinds of ways, as individuals, as a culture, and as a church.

We just don’t want to feel sad. We’ll do almost anything to avoid it. And if we must feel sad, we at least want our sadness to end when we see fit. We want grief to be a task we can complete; the oven timer of our soul dings and we’re on to something else. But that isn’t how grief works. We control it as much as we control the weather.

The hope God offers us is this: he will keep close to us, even in darkness, in doubt, in fear and vulnerability. He does not promise to keep bad things from happening. He does not promise that night will not come, or that it will not be terrifying, or that we will immediately be tugged to shore. He promises that we will not be left alone. He will k

God’s love is a constant, not night and day, but the speed of light. His love is the center of all things and there is no darkness in it. The love of God—not sickness or weariness or death or suffering or affliction or joy—is the fixed center of our lives and of eternity.

And we pray that far under the surface of our lives, however easy or arduous, there would be a deep source of joy, a constant current of love that will never run dry.

God is trustworthy and what he gives is a blessing, even if we have to squint to see

To choose joy is to see all existence as a gift, which is why the practice of joy is inseparable from the practice of gratitude. Gratitude gives birth to joy because gratitude teaches us to receive life as a gift in the moment we’re in, regardless of what lies ahead. “It is the truly converted life in which God has become the center of all,”

We have to learn, through practice, to be people who embrace good news

but in the life of a God-centered person, sorrow and joy can exist together.”3