No doubt there are many nights in which we long for the morning, and days we wish were shorter. We look for the day when the trial will pass or the pain subside. We wish this period of time were over so that a better time can come.
We say “this too shall pass,” and certainly it does, but so does the day itself, and we get only so many of these. Maybe there is a better way to get through the day (or night) than wishing it away.
What if we embraced the day, whatever it brings?
What if we asked God for wisdom to meet the trial?
What if we asked God to use the painful day for His glory and our good?
What if we asked God to reveal Himself to us in this very trying day?
What if we thanked God for allowing us to suffer for His name?
What if we thanked God for another occasion to trust Him?
What if we asked God for calmness, rest, and sleep?
If “all the days ordained for me were written in God’s book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16), then there are no wasted days, no days which will not draw us closer to conformity to Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29).
This view does not make us either masochistic or stoic, but aware of God’s providential design in our lives in which there are no accidents and not one thing which eventually does not make us more like Jesus.
It also is not living in denial of our pain or saying all is well when it is not. It is facing our day with confidence in our loving Heavenly Father who does all things well.
It’s certain that Jesus Himself saw reality this way, and possible that He sang it as well. The traditional psalms sung at Passover included Psalm 118. That means that the hymn Jesus and the disciples sang on their way to Gethsemene may have included the very words of verse 24, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Imagine what that day held in store for Him.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay,
to show that the surpassing power belongs to God,
and not to us.”
2 Corinthians 4:7