June 24, 2026
We’ve all experienced from time to time what the Spanish poet and mystic St.John of the cross referred to as “a dark night of the soul”. Or, as Psalm 23 puts it, “the valley of the shadow of death”. Darkness and despair haunt the night for countless souls. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, or so it seems.
I remember as if it were yesterday a dark valley my family went through when our daughter’s husband was tragically killed in a construction accident while teaching at a university in Zambia. My immediate response as she tearfully told me via a long distance phone call that he had died took me a bit by surprise. Shocked and with instant anguish I found myself saying, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him”. Why Job 13:15 burst out at that moment was evidence of something Elihu asks in 35:10, “Where is God my maker, who gives songs in the night?”
The “night” of bereavement, black as it was, could not dispel “a song in the night”. That song was more than a reflex. It was witness to a “peace that passeth understanding”. The storms of life cannot wash away a faith that is built on the rock.
C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an English pastor who was referred to as “the Prince of preachers”. In his powerful poetic style he preached:
“So, then, poor Christian, thou needest not go pumping up thy poor heart to make it glad. Go to thy Maker, and ask him to give thee a song in the night. Thou art a poor dry well; thou hast heard it said, that when a pump is dry, you must pour water down it first of all, and then you will get some up; and so, Christian, when thou art dry, go to God, and ask him to pour some joy down thee, and then thou wilt get some joy up from thine own heart. Do not go to this comforter or that, for you will find them Job’s comforters, after all; but go thou first and foremost to thy Maker, for he is the great composer of songs and teacher of music; he it is who can teach thee how to sing: “God, my Maker, who giveth me songs in the night.”
No, this is not the power of positive thinking nor of mind over matter. Rather it is the spring of living water that flows from the very throne of God into the hearts of all who put their trust in him.
