Joy Comes in the Morning

There is a sentence in this Psalm that has carried the church through a thousand long nights: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning." Read it slowly. Not "joy might come." Not "joy will eventually come if you try harder." Joy comes — as the sun does, on the appointed hour, whether or not the watcher believes it will. Sorrow has been measured. It has a length, and the length is one night. It has a bedtime, and morning has been promised before it. The Psalm does not deny the weeping. It says the weeping is a guest who stays for an evening and does not move in. By morning, joy is at the door.

The first joyful morning to which this Psalm pointed broke over a garden outside Jerusalem long before any of us was born. The weeping of God's people had stretched on for three days; the body of the King was in the tomb; the watchers thought the long night had become a permanent dark. And then, at dawn on the first day of the week, the stone was rolled away, and a new kind of light came into the world. Joy came in the morning. Joy stood up out of the grave. Joy met the women on the path and called them by name. Every other morning of joy any believer will ever know is in some way an echo of that one. The mourning that has been turned into dancing has been turned in His body, before it was turned in ours. So when the night seems long over us, this Psalm hands us a piece of paper from the empty tomb and tells us to read it again. Joy comes in the morning. The morning has already come.