The Night is Powerful

The night is powerful.

It comes like a covering, but it is often like removing your bed covers and getting ready for a brand new day. It lets you see into the depths of your reality. As everything quietens down, and the crickets come out to make melodies, and the mosquitoes have drunk to their belly’s content (do they have bellies? they certainly don’t have hearts!), and the last few lights on the street go out, there is a certain stillness that cannot be exchanged for anything. It is amidst this space that you begin to notice.

You notice the few lights in the cityscape that continue to burn. You see the moving shadows, the silhouettes through the windows, tree branches swaying in the night breeze. You see houses, some at rest, some with who knows what happening inside the four walls. You start to hear things like footsteps, and gates swinging shut; sounds that would be lost in the busyness of the day time. You hear your breathing, sometimes even your thoughts.

Many dislike the night for that very reason. They don’t like the sound of their thoughts. And there just isn’t enough covering in the darkness of the night to subdue the light of a person’s thoughts. Like a candle or a lantern that you hold in your hand, thoughts journey with you, lighting up the path before you. Sometimes their light is blue, sometimes green, a dull orange, maybe neon pink. And the night just makes this light even sharper.

The night is powerful because you also notice lights in the distance that would have never stood out in a thousand years if not for the darkness enveloping everything around them. They suddenly gleam like stars in the sky, standing for hope and more. The stillness makes for a very cooperative object for a possible painting. The layers of shadows give the night its own beauty, one of its kind.

Things change in the night. Some things even heal. The earth refreshes itself, to bring something new for the next day. Though it seems like life has come to a halt at night, it has a life of its own. There’s life going on even under the covering of darkness.

Take in the night. Take in the deep silence. Take in the cool unwinding of the day’s whirring activities, the settling of things learnt and things undone, the imprinting of new memories into your brain’s long-term storage. Take it all in. Because when the dawn arrives, it will be another fresh breath upon your life, new mercies preparing you for new conquests. And you will find that the night prepared you. The rest helped you heal. The darkness helped your eyes to rejuvenate, so that your vision is righted to rightly see your Father’s hand in every hour, whether it was engulfed in light or darkness.

The night is powerful. And the One who holds our hand doesn’t break away just because times and seasons change. And so, the night is meaningful, and even beautiful.