There's something about the night that has always intrigued me. Perhaps its the pure silence or the array of stars that can be seen. There's a sort of peace that is found in the night that just doesn't exist in the busyness of the day. Night serves as a time of rest and rejuvenation. For me night is the time when I am most vulnerable to the presence of God.
As I sat outside on my break from work tonight, taking in the wonderful silence of the night, I was reminded of a memory. During my trip in Cappadocia, Turkey, about two years ago, there was one night that I and a few others from my team went out for a walk during the night. We walked for about a mile or two out into a wide open desert. By the time we had gone a ways, we could see a small storm off in the distance. I remember hearing the eerie sound of the call to prayer off in the distance as the flickers of lightning illuminated the night sky. About halfway out we stopped and sat taking in the beauty of the night sky and the sounds of the land so foreign to our own. For the next hour, I sat with a heavy heart over the country so broken and deceived, in need of the one true savior. We each took time to pray out loud about the things God had opened our eyes to while we were in Istanbul and Ankara. I remember the raw emotion of our prayers offered up to the God who was all around us, but seemed so hidden to the people around us. I remember so vividly the desperate pleas to raise up a generation in Turkey of men and women who would truly know Christ and be set free from their bondage. My heart has never felt so broken and desperate for a people. Although I was in a country far from Christ, I have never felt so close to him as I did on that night. I could sense him all around me, in the soft roll of thunder and in the fierce thunderclap.
I am reminded every time I see beauty in nature, that there is a God who created each and every beautiful thing. He created the night, the stars, the storm, the sunset and sunrise. There is such beauty in the creation, but even more beauty in the creator.
It is moments like these, that I hope to experience the presence of God while on the World Race. Pure and raw emotion poured out to the one who holds the universe in his hands, the only one who can mend the deep hollowness, emptiness and brokenness of the world.
