For the most part, you can pretend during the day. Life keeps you busy.  The smile stays in place and you can answer “fine” to everyone’s “how are you.”

But, then, the sun goes down and desperation shows up in the dark.  Those moments when it is just you and the silence in the room and there is no more hiding.  And, in that moment, you are face to face with a God whom you adore but do not always understand.  Then what?

That is when you must remember.

Though the ropes of the wicked 
were wrapped around me,
I did not forget Your instruction.  – Psalm 119:61

The psalmist declared that, even when things seemed to be at their worst, he did not forget God’s Word.  He knew God to be a keeper of His promises and a deliverer of His people.  And, so, when the dark settled in and the desperation began to build…

I rise at midnight to thank You. – Psalm 119:62

The psalmist rose to praise the One who was with him in the dark.

It is what the people of God do when the world around them begins to shake and the ground beneath their feet seems to give way.

Think of Paul and Silas in prison.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. – Acts 16:25

Do not read a verse like that lightly.  These were not superhuman men who were simply having a hymn night in the local jail.  They had been beaten and mocked and placed in chains and locked away in the “inner prison.”  They were in the darkest of places and it was now midnight.  Don’t you think that desperation hung heavy in the air?

So, like the psalmist, they remembered.  And they prayed and they praised.

Because that is what you do in the dark.