My Song in the Night, and I Did Not Choose It

The rain on that window makes a particular noise because of the slate sill outside, and everybody who has ever stayed in this house has mentioned it, and she has stopped hearing it except at this hour.

Twenty to six. Small lamp. Two cups because her sister is here for the week and her sister is also awake, because it is that kind of house at that kind of hour.

And she is not saying the thing that is in her head. She has not said it for two weeks.

It is a hymn. An old one, not one she likes particularly, not one she has heard recently, not one anybody sings any more. Her grandmother's, probably. It arrives before she is properly awake, and it is always the second verse, and it is always the same three lines, and then she is awake and standing in a kitchen at twenty to six with a tune going round.

Fourteen mornings.

She has looked up the words. She has read them and found them ordinary. She has waited for them to mean something and they have not.

And she is embarrassed to be interested in this, because she is a sensible woman who has spent a lifetime being wary of people who make too much of small things.

Come and sit down, and take one of the cups. Because there is a psalmist who woke in the night with something and wrote down what he called it, and the word he chose is not the word you have been using.

He called it his song, and he did not say where it came from

Psalm 77 is written by a man in a bad stretch. He says outright that he cannot sleep and cannot speak and has been going over the old days trying to work out what has happened to him.

And in the middle of it, this.

I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.Psalm 77:6

Three things in a row and hold all three.

My song in the night. He has one. He calls it his, and he calls it a song, and it is located in the night.

I commune with mine own heart. He is talking to himself, which is what people at that hour do.

My spirit made diligent search. He is looking for something and does not report finding it in that verse.

Now here is what I want you to notice. He does not explain the song. He does not say what it was, what it meant, or where it came from. He records that it was there, calls it his, and gets on with the psalm.

You are holding something the psalm would call a song, and the man who first named one of those did not explain his either. That is not a stretch made to flatter two weeks of odd mornings; Psalm 77:6 puts the song in the night and offers no interpretation of it, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a bad night in an old psalm and lays it in a cottage kitchen at twenty to six with rain on a slate sill. It does not have to mean something to be a real thing.

Now the second half, and it is about the embarrassment, because that is what is keeping you from having this at all.

You are wary of people who make too much of small things. That wariness has served you and it is not wrong.

But notice the cost of it here. It means you cannot receive anything small, and almost everything God does is small at the point of arrival. A cloud like a hand. A boy with bread. A widow with two coins. A tune in a kitchen.

Wariness of nonsense is a good thing to have. It is not the same thing as wariness of gifts, and the two have quietly merged in you.

You are permitted to receive something small without becoming a person who makes too much of things, and the two are not the same movement. Zechariah 4:10 asks who hath despised the day of small things, and it is the Holy Spirit who separates good sense from a habit of refusing everything that arrives quietly.

A gift is not a puzzle

One more thing, and it will change how you take the second cup.

You have been treating this as a message to be decoded. You looked up the words. You read them and found them ordinary. You waited for the meaning and it did not come.

But a song is not primarily a message. A song is company. That is what songs are for at that hour and always have been, and the psalmist calls it my song, which is possessive and warm, not the word that came to me.

So it is possible, and I would say likely, that this is not a puzzle you are failing to solve. It is a thing to have. Your grandmother's tune, arriving in your head before you are awake, fourteen mornings running, and you are allowed to simply have it.

You have been given something rather than set a riddle, and a gift does not owe anybody an interpretation. Job 35:10 says who giveth songs in the night, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the giving, at twenty to six, without a note attached explaining what it is for.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it can carry a tune it did not choose.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not how much you have understood about your own mornings. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.