“. . . God my Maker, who gives songs in the night.” Job 35:10
Any man can sing in the day. When the cup is full, man draws inspiration from it. When wealth rolls in abundance around him, any man can praise the God who gives a plentiful harvest or sends home a loaded argosy.
It is easy enough for an Aeolian harp to whisper music when the winds blow—the difficulty is for music to swell forth when no wind is stirring. It is easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight, but he is skillful who sings when there is not a ray of light to read by—who sings from his heart.
No man can make a song in the night of himself; he may attempt it, but he will find that a song in the night must be divinely inspired. Let all things go well, I can weave songs, fashioning them wherever I go out of the flowers that grow upon my path—but put me in a desert, where no green thing grows, and by what shall I frame a hymn of praise to God? How shall a mortal man make a crown for the Lord where no jewels are? Only let this voice be clear, and this body full of health, and I can sing God’s praise: silence my tongue, lay me upon the bed of languishing, and how shall I then chant God’s high praises, unless he himself give me the song? No, it is not in man’s power to sing when all is adverse, unless an altar-coal shall touch his lip. It was a divine song, which Habakkuk sang, when in the night he said,
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Then, since our Maker gives songs in the night, let us wait upon him for the music. O, chief musician, let us not remain songless because affliction is upon us, but tune our lips to the melody of thanksgiving.
Adapted from Morning and Evening.
