More Than They That Watch for the Morning

The phone is face up on the table because face down felt like she was not taking it seriously.

Half past nine was the last time anybody rang. It is now twenty to four.

She is not there. That is the part that nobody who has not done it understands: she is not sitting in a corridor, she is sitting in her own kitchen, forty minutes away, because there was no room and no reason and somebody had to be with the children.

So her waiting has no corridor in it. It has a table, a cold mug, the fridge coming on and going off, and a phone that has stayed silent for six hours and ten minutes.

She has checked twice that the ringer is on. Both times she knew it was on before she checked.

That is your table. That is your twenty to four. And I want to sit down with you, because there is a psalm about waiting through a night, and the man who wrote it did his waiting in the dark exactly the way you are.

Watchmen counting down

Psalm 130 is a night psalm, and it says the same thing twice because the man writing it cannot get past it.

I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. 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 130:5-6

More than they that watch for the morning. And then, in case anybody missed it: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.

He is talking about the men on a city wall through the last watch of the night, the ones whose whole job was to keep looking east. They were not doing anything. They could not make the sun come up. Their entire occupation was staying awake and facing the right way until light arrived.

That is your kitchen at twenty to four, exactly.

You are keeping a watch, not failing to sleep. The written word takes what you are doing and calls it by a name with dignity in it, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman at a kitchen table rather than leaving it as poetry about ancient cities.

Now let me name the particular hardness of your version, because it is not the same as sitting in a corridor.

You have none of the small mercies of being there. Nobody walks past. No door opens. There is no vending machine to go to and no one to catch the eye of. You are doing the waiting with nothing to look at except a phone, and you have the additional weight of feeling that you ought to be somewhere else and cannot be.

You are not less present for being forty minutes away. The written word does not locate the watcher; it names the watching. The Holy Spirit is at your table at twenty to four, and He did not stay at the hospital.

And I want to say the thing about the psalm's second half, because it is where the man puts his weight.

In his word do I hope. Not in the morning arriving at a particular hour. Not in what the light will show him. He rests the whole night on what God has said, which is available to a person in the dark with no information whatsoever.

You have something to hold that does not depend on news. The written word gives you His own word as the thing to hope in, and it is fully available at twenty to four with a silent phone. The Holy Spirit carries that, and He is not waiting for the call either.