In 2013, the Lord gave me some insight into what He had built into the morning, why daybreak was so valuable, and sunrise speaks of His glory, it became Outposts #92: “The Song Of The Morning”. i wondered at the time, that if the break of day had all this God-stuff built into it then what does the evening contain”? It is a mystery. The wonders which our God built into the beginning and end of the day are indeed a secret. There are some very interesting hidden things of the Lord that highly affect every human being every day, and they both, daybreak and the setting sun, speak to the general call of God for man to return….. repent and come home. God is very specific… It’s not just “A” morning, or “AN” evening…. it is “THE” morning and “THE” evening.
Nevertheless, both time frames contain the published truth of God and the concealed truth of God, or, just so i can sound really bright, it would be Deus Revelatus/Deus Abscontitus, God revealed, God concealed. BUT! i believe when it comes to all hidden mysteries of the Lord, He is like a proud father who’s just come in the house and His children climb up and eagerly pull on Him to know what treats He has brought them … oh, and don’t you know, our Heavenly Father has pockets full of incredible things. When we chase after Him, climbing on Him, hugging and hanging on Him like little kids who just loooovvveee their daddy, the Lord laughs and plays, wrestles, and carries on with us… I believe He’ll reveal to us the contents of His pockets if we are interested enough to chase it.
Morning is mostly a revealed mystery of God, i mean what the Lord has hidden in sunrise, with a little effort on my part, He helped me find it. Yes, it took several months to get a little understanding, and if God had not given me understanding, i would not have it. So tonight brings us not a song of the rising sun, but a poem about the setting sun, the “Poem Of The Evening.” Honestly, i don’t know if i can do it justice, but this is what i’ve got.
When summer evening fades and wanders toward the night, cats sit at the edges of driveways and bushes looking bored, waiting for something to happen. In the evening, if we walk down the street we can look into houses where we see people eating, watching television, … hear people talking … some loud, some soft, some laughing…or not…sometimes their voices echo a little in the street. There are boys planning their next game or challenge of battle… a girl is swinging on the swings, and others ride their bikes up and down in the last slivers of daylight.
The summer evening seems like a conclusion to something somehow…the air is thick over the pavement and steadily cooling under the trees…there are car washers, hedge trimmers, lawn mowers, plan makers, and lawn rakers, twittering birds in trees settling in for the coming night… occasionally there are echoes of laughing children as moms urge them toward their evening chores. The day is done and evening has come … it’s time to rest and rethink tomorrow. We all started the day with mercies new, living and breathing a new beginning, but evening, ahhh…evening … it poses refreshing and return, coming home again to find consolation in the sanctuary.
The Lord has built many mysteries into so many parts of our lives which occur daily, and yet, many of us don’t see or hear most of them… just breezing past His treasures, preoccupied with ourselves, without even a noticing glance for the most part. Jesus wants us to chase after Him as He chases after us … He wants us to discover His gems and beauties, His treasures and character for us to marvel at and wonder about, all designed for us to fall more deliriously in love with Him. Due to love, God chased us, his beloved, all the way to the cross, that we could also love because He first loved us. Let’s not be too lazy to dig up our Father’s treasures… after all, do we r-e-a-1-1-y want to know what God says and means, or do we just want to be settled in our beliefs and be right? Tough questions, if we’re honest about ourselves and our motivations.
The evening recites poetry to us, God-poetry concerning the “cause of all
causes”. The close of the day is the ending of daily afflictions in the sense that in Leviticus 14 and 15, there were many situations where someone would become unclean, but in the evening their uncleanness ended. The evening is a time to re-gather ourselves, refresh our hearts before the Lord, rest our bodies, and lay our burdens down. Psalm 103:12, “And as far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins.” We should take note, the day starts in the east like a rising wave in the first of the day, but comes to a close in the west, like the ocean surf roars to a close on the beach.
Day and night, morning and evening are specific time frames the entire world can relate to….all creatures, large and small, all things wide and narrow, all motes, jots, and tittles nearly weightless and less than weightless… participate … like it or not, they are all in.
From the beginning, God divided out time on the earth into day and night, but he also divided out two other very specific time frames called morning and evening. Genesis 1:5, “And God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning was the first day.”
Now, i’m not a professor, nor am i fluent in Hebrew … at best i’m just an “armchair theologian”… but i believe Gen1:5 is a good translation. The Hebrew word for day, “yome” (long “o”), is a different word than morning, “bo-ker” (long “o”), indicative of distinctive and separate time periods, as is the Hebrew for night, “lay-il” (lie-il) is different from evening, which is “eh-reb” (air-reb).
Our word, “day”, that little three-letter word, is said to be the “most important concept of time in the OT by which a point of time, as well as a range of time, can be expressed.” In that verse, Gen 1:5, if we’re willing to believe that not only did God use precise words, but His order of those words were and are very important … it was first light and then it was day. The light was first and set the precedence of… “toward the light”, which should be our leaning toward God for our day, “toward the light” The light leans towards the day, and darkness leans towards the night. The two transition periods were the rising light, called “morning” and the fading light, which is called evening. When we combine morning, day, evening, and night, Gen 1:5 calls that a “day”. What was pondered upon of the Lord yesterday evening… flows into our day like a trickle of water from the subterranean chambers of our mind and heart to be employed in the action of living.
From the “rising light”, or morning, comes the revealed power of the infinite, and rising mercy… Lam 3:22-23, “Through the LORD’S mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is His faithfulness.” The evening brings flashes of insight and the process of gaining clarification of what was and is truly important, as seen in the idea of “in the evening we consider the events of the day”, meaning we roll them around like a baker kneads dough. Matthew 26:20, “When evening had come, He sat down with the twelve.” Evening was a time to, rest and recover, but also a specific time for interpreting, simplifying, refection, and resolving. During the meal Jesus gave the disciples clarification… and there is a real thing called “The Art of Clarification”, which is, for example, when someone makes a statement, and then, if we didn’t quite grasp what they meant, we ask for further insight by way of facts, restating their words a different way, or asking for more context, so we understand, or we expand on our verbal presentation so as to give a clearer picture of meaning and intent. This is what the Lord has hidden in His creation of a thing called “the evening”.
Go with me, and let yourself dream as you imagine the following:
In the evening, a summer evening after a rain shower, the color of the sky is a brilliant image in the occasional puddles of water at the curb. The sky has darkened to a deep blue and the few clouds are profound rose and radiant flame. The sun is the exclusive bright light behind the edge of the horizon and the moon is only a faint image…. way up high in the evening, the world we see is half-lit and is becoming still with only the distant dog worried by a faraway alarm somewhere. A neighbor is in her kitchen washing a glass, illuminated by the light over the sink, a little breeze kicks up as the thermal currents change the air in preparation for night. There is time, a little time left between the last light and the bridge to night, night being a twist away from the light before morning.
In the evening, a summer evening, color gets lost and the world where we are, submerges in greyscale, in the evening God’s wisdom lurks in our minds as we ponder the day, reviewing our thoughts, the words of others, and tomorrow’s possibilities. Selah.
In the morning, light breaks through the darkness… we plan for the day, and in the evening we all have the inclination to reflect on the day’s events, taking time to review the impact of where our feet have carried us, hopefully, looking to gather ideas about the next day. Within both the words for morning and evening, the Lord built into them a call for man to return, a subtle but persistent call for fallen mankind to come home. Though the morning is busy converting the past into the future, in the evening, the drawing to a close the curtain of the day, the Lord has hidden poetry to soothe weary minds and hearts….it’s a specific time frame of living poetry where we gather our wits and look to rest…. a time to share and revelate. Amazingly, but not surprisingly, there is also consolation designed into the evening, experiencing God’s support toward those who breathe strongly for sorrow, reconnecting to the faithful and righteous One.
The morning is pregnant with life, with new beginnings, and motivation for a renewed search for the “fallen sparks”, so to speak. Nevertheless, in all those tidbits, what is it that’s hidden in the idea of evening, veiled as a mystery to be discovered? As the morning is pregnant with beginnings, the evening is pregnant with endings…. pregnant with hindsight and insight, pregnant with re-examination and retrospection. i believe God built into the heart of man the need to discuss and consider his ways in the evening, remembering recent things in comparison to events and conceptions of long ago.
With the evening, comes the power of change. When we review the day, we have before us the opportunity to hear the wisdom of the Lord and make course changes for tomorrow. It might be something as simple as going to work a different way, or maybe as serious as changing a personal habit toward a more Christ-centered end, becoming like the refracted light of His presence forming the color palate of the Heavens.
The Lord has built into the evening, eyes to see, for we can see in our time of repose at the end of the day, often with the greatest clarity, the events of the day. As to remembering things well, evening is best …. as time goes by, the sun comes up and goes down many times in a row… after many days we attempt to remember a specific event, but time has a way of eroding memory, and many times…. our present life seems to shade or color the memory of the past. But in the evening, in the hours following when those events happened is the best time to consider carefully what our hands have found to do during the day. i strongly suspect one secret to be revealed is that the evening was designed for man to re-find his fading sense of purpose and direction.
The poem of the evening is the subtle call of the Lord for men to consider their ways, to review their works and come to Him in simple faith, so those who return can become heirs with Christ in the Kingdom of God. Evening’s prose speaks of an end of the day, like morning’s melody sings of the day’s beginning. When the drapes are pulled shut in anticipation of the evening hours, God built into man’s heart the need to reconvene at home, in his sanctuary to review and discuss, reflecting to understand for right perception, like someone searching for water and essential good.
The highest form of charity is when the giver is completely concealed from the receiver, possibly in order not to embarrass the person, as is said, “the concealed gift subdues anger.” The evening was a present to men, a secret gift … a mysterious gift. There is wisdom built into the evening for those who will chase after it, but it’s hidden, as part of the Lord is hidden… Deus Abscontitus God concealed. Wisdom promises godliness to those who hear and hide it away in their hearts.
Hidden wisdom is better than gold. Proverbs 2:1-5.
The evening has a drawing effect … it draws all of us toward the very essence of God Himself, who has concealed a mystery at the close of the day. Mankind naturally tends to want to go home as the day comes to an end, to go home and conclude and ponder. i believe little do people know, but the evening inspires all people to end their work in preparation of beginning again tomorrow.
In Judges 20:26 it says, “Then all the children of Israel, that is, all the people, went up and came to the house of God and wept. They sat there before the LORD and fasted that day until evening;…” Where the Lord uses the word “evening” where it ends in a Hebrew letter, hei, which colors the preceding word … “evening”. In this case, that letter colors the idea of what to do in the “evening”, meaning it was a time to think, to discuss, to exercise choice, and plan their action.
Let us use our evenings well. We get one per day. Use it wisely. Evening is a gift from God for our rest, consolation, and consideration of where we are and what we’re doing. Evening is divine rhyme and verse from our beloved to us … let us catch His God-poetry and join Him in it, taking up anew “the cause of all causes.”
Every place has its own cadence. Every new home, every neighborhood, and every town all have their own tempo and beat. We may have to be there for a time to recognize it… a week, a month, a year….but their evening accent and flow are there … take note of the rhythm of people around you and how they are investing their time in the hours before dark.
When evening comes, the eyes of men are, typically, reflecting on the events of today and puzzling over what will come tomorrow. Matthew 16:2-3, “He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is
red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.” They were using the evening to benefit tomorrow’s agenda, but they weren’t using it to consider their position between themselves and the Lord, which was a much more important consideration.
Evening is a specific period of time to meditate on our affairs and our place in the works of the Lord, as in Matthew 14:23, “And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there.” God gave man evening for rest, Zephaniah 2:7, “… In the houses of Ashkelon, they shall lie down at evening. For the LORD their God will intervene for them, And return their captives.”
What do you do with your evenings? How do you use this specific time period?
Not just “A day” as in this time resembling another time, but “THE evening” which particularizes or specializes a precise time frame. It is a specific designation of the Lord. How do you spend your evenings? … consider carefully and spend them wisely.
As this evening comes to a close, consider your position before the Lord. Take care and pay attention to the small things, and make an effort to learn the art of small talk. You know, as Eugene Peterson said, “If we don’t learn how to make small talk, we’ll never see the green shoots of grace growing in people’s backyards.” Drive carefully, pray for your neighbor, and be at peace. Amen.