Posted on by Delbert Tritsch

The Darkest Part of the Night

“Thus, as it is always darkest just before the Day dawneth, so God useth to visite his servants with greatest afflictions, when he intendeth their speedy advancement.”1 These words penned by the English preacher, Thomas Fuller, have stayed the destabilized and encouraged the discouraged. They have imparted a new paradigm to hopeless souls as those individuals were awakened to an unrealized simplicity they immediately understood and embraced.

Perhaps, your thinking was transformed when you first heard the night is darkest just before the dawn. You were reassured that a better day was about to break forth on your dark night and dispel your woes. You were enlivened enough to continue your struggle a little longer. When that period of darkness ended (assuming it has), the duration from your mental revolution to the realization of your dawn became inconsequential. With the night behind you, it felt shorter than when it had enveloped you.

Disappointingly, the doctrine of darkest night-ends is somewhat tomfoolery. Dismissing moonlight and artificial light, the darkest part of the night is not just before dawn; it is the middle of night. Sunset occurs when the sun finally dips below the horizon, and sunrise when it crests. Twilight is from sunset to dusk and dawn to sunrise. It is the time when sunlight is present in the sky even though the sun is below the horizon. Civil twilight occurs when the sun is from just below the horizon to six degrees below it. Nautical twilight is longer for when the sun is up to twelve degrees below the horizon. Astronomical twilight is when the sun is as much as eighteen degrees below the horizon. The farther the sun is from the horizon, the less sunlight reaches the sky. Therefore, the darkest part of the night is when the sun is at its farthest point from the horizon at the middle of the night.

The message that an end to trouble is just ahead intoxicates many beleaguered minds. Well-meaning counselors and ministers preach this promising sermon to eager audiences. Charlatans also preach this message endearing followers to themselves to gain influence and wealth. But we are simply not promised an end to suffering in this life. Granted, life’s ebbs and flows offer seasons of rest for most of us. But some struggles for some people remain till death.

Perhaps, that time just before twilight seems darkest because the entire night has been endured. But the part of the night that must feel the darkest to many is that lengthy part after they were told the dawn is a moment away when, in fact, half of the night yet remained. To be handed a hope that sifts between one’s fingers like sand as the night crawls forward must shroud the mind with a darkness greater than to face the night alone.

Some are at the darkest part of their night, and it’s at the point furthest from dusk and dawn. The light they desire to see is not about to shine in a moment. Much of their long and dark night remains to be endured. A false hope that their suffering will end momentarily when, in fact, it will not end for some time only makes their night harder. They don’t need to be told it’s about to get better. They need to be shown a better Light—One that does not shine based on circumstance. While we’re in the world, we can succumb to the suffering of the night forgetting that we are the light of the world. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (Joh. 8:12). When you have Jesus, you have the Light; and you will not walk in darkness even in the longest, darkest night. And because you have Jesus, He said, “Ye are the light of the world” (Ma. 5:14). When you understand that Jesus will be with you through your night, your circumstantial darkness cannot overwhelm you because your night is lighted by Him.

But so many don’t know the Light, and they don’t have the Light within them. And their night is long and dark. And I may do them more harm than good by telling them the night is almost over when they’ve just reached the middle of their suffering. The truth is that this night will pass eventually, but another night will come. And the answer is not to wait for the day, but the answer is to learn how to thrive in the night. They need the Light, and the best thing you or I can do for them is to join them in their darkness and shine the Light there.

Perhaps, saying a prayer for them and believing for their miracle isn’t all we should do. We can go by giving for many people and places, but everyone of us must give by going somewhere and to someone. There are people in the darkest part of their night who don’t need your words or money; they need your presence. They don’t need you to tell them things are going to get easier. They need you to be the Light in their night.

  1. A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof, with the History of the Old and New Testament acted thereon. 1650. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/renaissance-exploration/catalog/fg622vf3455. p 229. ↩︎
Posted on by Delbert Tritsch

Rejoice in the Transfer

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.

James 1:9-10

Life Is Motion

Life can be difficult.  Problems in life are guaranteed.  Some trials are easy to bear, but some push a person nearly to their breaking point.  And some of us break.  Adversity can compel someone to quit—to stop moving forward.  Such a conclusion is fatal.

Life is motion.  A glimpse into the atomic realm reveals that living things and even inorganic matter are continually in flux.  But basic skills of observation are enough for the average individual to recognize that movement, upon which growth depends, is present in all living things.  And as it is in our bodies, so is it in our spirits.

One who loses heart—their passion and purpose—will become as a dead person moving in body but lifeless within.  This kind of living dead existence is no life worth having.

Life Is Transfer

Even in the emptiness of the cosmos, something exists.  It is no secret to the scientific community that space contains energy.  I would not be surprised if we one day discovered that the value in that vacuum is exponentially greater than what any theoretical astrophysicist had before considered.

While popular science might suggest that light is unlike the mechanical waves of a ripple in a pond and requires no medium through which to travel, I propose otherwise.  It could be that light is very much like the tiny waves created by a pebble dropped into a pond, but we have not yet fully recognized light’s pond.  Maybe, the medium light requires to travel, without which we could never see, is the fabric of space and time; and I find such a hypothesis extremely plausible.  Perhaps, however, there is another material, substance, structure, or energy existing within space-time that we have yet to discover that is the conduit through which light moves.

Theorizing about the motion of light and its possible displacement of some yet-to-be-understood framework stretches the mind; but without question, sound requires a medium through which to travel.  We are most familiar with the movement of sound through our atmosphere.  Indeed, sound does move as waves through the air like ripples in a pond.  A sound is not a thing that moves from point A to point B; rather, the sound’s source pushes molecules in the air which are in turn pushed into other molecules.  A chain reaction ensues of molecules pushing molecules pushing molecules causing waves of compression and expansion in the atmosphere.  These sound waves disturb the delicate facilities of our ears allowing us to hear the sound that was made.  I imagine that sound is an invisible and complex cooperation of many members to send an audible imprint from its source to one or more destination.

Light and sound are motion; they are transferences of energy.  Such is true for both, even if light truly requires no medium.  In fact, it appears to me that all motion is transfer.  Something moves from one point to another.  And it seems that most everything that moves influences something else to move; it transfers energy to something else.

This video explains the fact that we feel heat transfer, instead of temperature.

We do not feel the temperature of an object when we touch it with our hand; rather, we feel the transfer of heat between our hand and the object.  If the object we touch is a good conductor of heat, it will probably feel colder to us than its actual temperature would cause us to expect because we will feel the transfer of heat from our hand to the object.

The natural parallels the spiritual and provides examples to illuminate our minds to understand deeper things, and I believe natural movement and energy-transfer can teach us something about life.  Life is transfer.  In everything you do or think or experience, you are giving, receiving, or both.  You are influencing and being influenced.  You are in a transfer.

Rejoice

James wrote of the person of “low degree.”   This state is one of humiliation or depression.  It may be a chronic condition that has come to define the individual, or it could be a dark valley one reluctantly hazards.  It is a place of want or suffering.  To be low is generally considered undesirable.  Perhaps you’ve been there and experienced a testing of your faith.

The valley is not the only place your faith is tested; it’s also tried on the mountain.  God is concerned with how your faith weathers the sunshine, as well as the storm.  Do you grow in the good times, as well as the bad?  Do you continue to pray when life’s pressure releases for a season?  Do you practice holiness on vacation?

In James 1:9-10, I see transfer.  Some are moving from blight to blessing while others are falling from pinnacle to pit.  Are you watching the sunset as a heartless night looms, or do you see a silver lining brightening with a ray of sunlight breaking the previously thunderous and dark clouds?  You’re experiencing a transfer; rejoice in your transfer.

You’re moving ahead.  It may be up or down; but either way, it’s forward.  Rejoice in the movement.  Your transfer may be supplying something sustaining to someone or some situation; you’re feeling the coldness of loss while life flows from you to another.  Your transfer could be feeding you the strength you need to recover from a trial you’re surpassing.  Whatever it is, rejoice in it.

God is in control.  He’s helping you or using you or both.  But the transfer is evidence of life.  The transfer is evidence of God.  Rejoice in the transfer.