We Forgot About the Night.

We wake to a day of doing -
Of working to earn
Of doing to attain
Of securing to content
Of protecting that which we have worked and done and secured.

We’re hard workers, Lord. Don’t You see? Look how busy we are.

We’re building walls and laying plans and creating masterpieces. Yes, mostly of sand; but we think they’re really pretty. Don’t You?

We’re safe and sheltered and out of harms way. Look at out bank accounts and pretty little houses and that paper on the wall that says we’re so smart. We lay down at night without a care for tomorrow, because today we ensured our own security.

Oh, yes. We forgot about the night.

Well, we may not have cares for tomorrow, but cares find us on our pillows all the same.

When the lights go out, before our eyes will surrender to sleep, they’re there –
The shame of childhood never spoken.
The accusation all too true.
The act of injustice ignored.
The disgrace we cannot even bear to name.

Yes. In the dark, we are afraid.

But we bolster ourselves with what we can do –
Of working to earn
Of doing to attain
Of securing to content
Of protecting that which we have worked and done and secured.

And we’ll drift off to sleep here. Self-relied, self-assured, self-protected … and just a little bit tender from the nighttime journey of our hearts.

We’ll wake in the morning and do it all again. Before our heads hit the pillow again, we’ll work late and miss his t-ball game, we’ll wound our spouses and our friends in self-protecting acts, and we’ll tell illegal immigrants to get the hell out of our country because we don’t want to share that which we have secured.

And then the night will come.

As it always does.

But this time, would You … maybe, could You meet us there.

When the fear breaks in and whispers in our ears
Before we retreat into our self-made safe places –
In the space between awake and asleep
Fear and forgetting
Insecurity and ignoring –
Come.

Wreck the walls we have built with the sand and collide with our shame and disgrace. Grant us the grace of self-honesty and the courage before You to say, “I can’t”.