GOD IS THERE in your darkest night.
So Judas left at once, going out into the night (John 13:30, nlt).
And what a night it was. For Jesus, the twelve, and especially for Judas. Hellish darkness eclipsed his soul that night.
Earlier in this book I described a dark Halloween night when I was 16. A couple of delinquent friends and I had loaded the back of a Toyota pickup with basketball sized pumpkins in various stages of rotting. We drove around town throwing them onto porches of innocent victims and watching them explode when they hit the deck.
At one house, five seconds after the bomb exploded, a burly man ran out the front door, screaming. I took off at a full sprint around his house and through his back yard. All of a sudden everything turned upside down. I ran full speed into a neck-high clothesline in the dark. I’m glad the police didn’t catch us. I can just see someone watching a police lineup and saying, “It was the guy with the red horizontal line on the front of his neck.” In retrospect, it’s only God’s grace that I didn’t break my neck.
Evil comes alive at night. Darkness conceals. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, approximately two-thirds (63.2 percent) of rapes and sexual assaults occur at night and 71 percent of motor vehicle thefts.
Yes, night conceals. But night also reveals.
The extent of Judas’s corruption would be revealed before the next sunrise. Peter, who had promised to stand with Jesus no matter what, would be revealed as a nocturnal braggart. On that night, and three days later, God’s heart would be revealed through Jesus like never before. Because God works the night shift, [i] the same darkness that concealed man’s evil revealed God’s love.
When he [Judas] had left, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is seen for who he is, and God seen for who he is in him” (John 13:31, msg). That night in the upper room in Gethsemane, God would be clearly revealed for who He was and is—Love. Jesus went to the cross because Jesus is love personified.
Life Question: What dark night have you experienced, physically or spiritually? In hindsight, can you see that God was at work in your darkness?
[i] My friend, the late Ron Mehl, wrote a wonderful book called, God Works the Night Shift.