Light at Evening Time
From Words of Cheer for Christian Pilgrims
By Theodore Cuyler, 1896
God's Word is an inexhaustible jewel-bed. What a gem of the first water is this beautiful text: "At evening time - it shall be light!" Like a many-sided diamond, it flashes out as many truths as it has polished sides. As the diamond has the quality of glistening in dim and darksome places, so this passage shines brightly in seasons of trouble and despondency. Old people may well put on their spectacles of faith and see what a rare and precious verse it is. The people of God who are under a cloud may also find in it the foretoken of better things to come.
The passage gleams out from one of the olden Jewish prophets - from the prophecies of Zachariah, of whom we know very little except that he flourished about the time of the return from Babylon, 520 years before Christ's advent. He is that cheerful seer who pictures the streets of Jerusalem as yet to be filled with old men leaning on their staffs and little boys and girls playing in the streets. The text occurs at the close of a remarkable passage, which reads as follows in a close translation: "And it shall be in that day, that there shall not be the light of the glittering orbs - but densely thick darkness. But there shall be one day (it is known to Jehovah) when it shall not be day and night; for at the evening time it shall be light." The beautiful text is so rich in spiritual suggestions that we are quite satisfied to catch some gleamings of the diamond.
1. The very essence of hope, is in this inspiring verse. Gray-haired Jacob in his loneliness wails out, "Joseph is dead; Simeon is dead; now they take Benjamin also. All these things are against me!" Presently the returning cavalcade arrives to tell him that Joseph is governor of Egypt, and that he is invited to come and spend his sunset of life, in the best of the land that Pharaoh can offer. A long, troubled day has the patriarch weathered through - but at evening time, it is light. This has been the ten thousand times repeated experience of God's children.
It is a part of God's discipline with us - to hide his throne in clouds and darkness. The office of faith is to hold fast to the fact, that behind those clouds - a loving Father dwells upon that throne. It is the office of hope to look for the clearing of the clouds by and by. If we had no storms - we would never appreciate the blue sky. The trial of the tempest - is the preparation for the warm afterglow of sunshine. Blind unbelief is continually railing at God, charging him with cruelty and denying the idea of a special providence of all-wise love. But faith whispers, "Think it not strange, or as though some strange thing happened unto you. God sees the end from the beginning. To the upright, there arises light in darkness. All things work together for good - to those who love him." Hope bids us push on and upward. Only keep pressing higher, and closer to Jesus, instead of wandering downward into doubt and sullen despair.
The darkness may be thick about you now, my brother; but the Christian life is a walk of faith. God never deceives his children. If we but keep fast hold of God's Guiding Hand - we shall find the road to be not one step longer or harder than is best for us. God has piloted every saint through this very road and up these very hills of difficulty. It will be better further on. Every chastening of a believer's soul lies at the end of a painful ordeal. Every success worth the having lies at the end of brave, protracted toil. Twenty years of storm must be battled through by Wilberforce and Clarkson before Negro emancipation is enacted by the British Parliament. At evening time the sky was crimsoned with the flush of victory.
2. This passage has a beautiful application to a Christian old age. Many people have a silly dread of growing old, and look upon gray hairs with dread. But, if life is well spent, its Indian Summer ought to bring a full granary and a golden leaf. The spiritual light at the twilight of life, becomes mellower; it is strained of mists and impurities. The aged believer seems to see deeper into God's Word - and further into God's heaven.
Yet not every human life has a golden sunset. Some suns go down under a cloud. At evening time it is cold and dark. I have been looking lately at the testimonies left by two celebrated men who died during my boyhood. One of them was the king of novelists, the other was the king of philanthropists. Both had lost their fortunes and lost their health. The novelist wrote as follows: "The old body gets more shattered every day. Windows will not pull up; doors refuse to open and shut. Sicknesses come thicker and faster, friends become fewer and fewer. Death has closed the long, dark avenue upon early loves and friendships. I look at them as through the grated door of a burial-place filled with monuments of those once dear to me." Ah! that is not a cheerful sunset of a splendid literary career. At evening time it looks gloomy and the air smells of the sepulcher.
Listen now to the old Christian philanthropist, whose inner life was hid with Christ in God. He writes: "I can scarcely understand why my life is spared so long, except it be to show that a man can be just as happy without a fortune as with one." The veteran pilgrim was getting nearer home. The Sun of Righteousness flooded his western sky. At evening time - it was light.
3. What a contrast there is between the death-bed of the impenitent and that of the adopted child of God, whose hope is anchored to Jesus. The one is dark; a fearful looking forward to a wrath to come. The other is the earnest expectation of an endless day which lies beyond the glorious sunset. I have just come from the sick-room of a woman whose life is ebbing away amid intense bodily suffering. It is one of the most cheerful spots in this sorrow-laden world. Jesus is watching by that bedside. He administers the cordials. He stays up that sinking head. "I am with you always" is to her the promise and foretoken of that other state of joy, "where I am - you shall be also." At evening time that chamber of death is light!
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