Four in the Morning and the House Is Dark

At four in the morning the boiler is not on yet and the house has gone properly cold, and Rhian is awake in it with her eyes open and no chance whatsoever of going back to sleep.

Four is a particular hour. It is not the middle of the night, which has its own permission and a kind of company to it. It is not early morning either, because nothing has started and nothing will start for a long time. It is the hour with no name and no traffic and nobody else awake, and if you are awake in it with something on your mind, the something has the whole house to itself.

Last night happened. And here in the dark it is not being remembered so much as broadcast, in full, with commentary, and the commentary is the part that does the damage.

She has done the arithmetic already. Seven o'clock is when it will be properly light. Three hours. She cannot do three hours of this. That is not self dramatizing, it is a practical assessment made by a woman lying in the cold with her eyes open: she does not have three hours of this in her.

Downstairs the fridge changes note. Outside, nothing.

Let me stop the story and speak to you, because if you are awake at four this is not a morning for a long build up.

I am not going to ask how long it had been before last night. Nobody is counting. I am not going to say anything about starting again. And I am not going to tell you what last night means about you, because it does not mean that, and the commentary running in this room is not from God, and I am not adding one word to it.

You are waiting inside a dark that has an end already fixed to it, and you were never handed a night with no morning attached. The psalm says my soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning, and a watchman waits for a thing he is not required to produce; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real posture in a cold house at four with three hours to go.

More than they that watch for the morning

Let me name the thing properly first, because at four in the morning a person needs to be told the truth quickly.

The dark is not the problem. The problem is that the dark has no distraction in it, and so the commentary has your whole attention, and the commentary is a very old one and it is very good at its job. It is not new information. It is the same three sentences, delivered with total confidence, in a house where there is nothing else to look at.

Here is the psalm, and it is short and it is written by somebody in exactly this hour.

My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.Psalm 130:6

He says it twice. That is the first thing to notice. In Hebrew poetry saying it twice is not padding, it is the equivalent of leaning in and repeating yourself because you need somebody to hear this one.

And now the picture itself: a watchman on a wall in the last hours of a shift. What does that man do? He watches. He does not build the sun. He does not have any influence at all over whether morning comes, and he is not evaluated on the sunrise. He is on the wall, awake, facing east, and the entire content of his job is to be there when it happens.

You are in the watchman's posture and you were never given the sunrise as your responsibility, and being awake in it is the whole of the work. That is written into Psalm 130, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a picture of a man on a wall into something a woman can actually stand in at four in the morning.

And notice: nobody has ever accused a watchman of being weak for waiting. It is not a failure state. It is the assignment. So the fact that all you can do this morning is get through until it is light is not evidence of anything about you. It is what the hour is for.

You are doing the assignment right now, and you were never falling short by being unable to do more than wait. Scripture names waiting as the watchman's own work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the accusation of uselessness off a person who is simply in the dark part of a night.

Now look at where the psalm starts, because it matters. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee. It opens at the bottom. And then, three lines in: if thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. The psalmist deals with the commentary early and directly. He says, in effect: if the accounting were the arrangement, nobody at all would be standing here. And that is not the arrangement.

You are standing under an arrangement that was never an accounting, and you were never going to be able to survive one anyway. The written word asks who could stand if He marked iniquities, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person hear that the question is rhetorical and the answer is nobody, and that this is good news at four in the morning.

Now the plain and necessary thing, and it goes right here where you will see it. If your body is in a bad state, see a doctor today, and tell them the truth. Do not decide anything about your body, or about stopping, on your own. That is not a failure of faith, it is basic care. And past that: the friend who has said to call any time and meant it, the helpline that is awake right now, the counselor, the room with the circle of chairs, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it. If you are awake at four and struggling, please make the call. He has held a great many people up through somebody else's voice on a phone.