Waiting for Morning

It's not just a metaphor.

Earlier this fall, a hurricane rolled over the mountains.

Because I’d previously lived in Florida, dealing with the aftermath of a major storm was not outside the scope of my experience.

Yet this time, things were different.

For one, I’d never dealt with a major storm while living alone.

For another, I’d never felt so smothered in darkness.

Florida’s closer to the equator, so even during the darker months, the sun still rises earlier and sets later than it does up here.

And all that darkness?

It wears on me—even when things are normal.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, my neighborhood went six days without power.

The thought hit me the third morning, as I sat in my cavernous front room with my candle.

I was actively waiting for daylight.

With 97% of our area without power and cloud cover blocking out both moon and stars, there was absolutely no natural ambient light.

It was just me, a flickering flame, and the suffocating darkness beyond.

But I had hope.

Soon, the sun would rise.

For the first time in my life, I truly resonated with the words of the psalmist:

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
    more than watchmen for the morning,
    more than watchmen for the morning.

I’d read those words many times—memorized them, even.

Yet the weight of their meaning was just now dawning on me, as it were.

I was so thankful for the writer whose words reached across millennia, speaking De profundis—out of the depths.

A writer who could express that deep-seated ache, that longing for the night to break.

A writer who—without access to the sort of instant illumination that I have been accustomed to—lived more closely to the rhythms of the agrarian calendar and was thus more aware of being at its mercy.

Someone who could express the profound longing for the light to shine into the darkness—both literal and figurative.

Who understood what it truly means to wait on the Lord as the watchman waits for morning.