When Evening Comes

Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me

let me be singing when the evening comes

I love these lyrics from Matt Redman's song, '10,000 Reasons.' I think they demonstrate, as well as you can in two lines, one of the essences of the Christian life.

When we wake up each day, we've got no idea what will happen. Will we get in a car wreck and spend the night in hospital? Will we receive some terrible family news, an unexpected bill? Or will some unexpected good news come our way? We have no way of knowing. So why don't we just hide under the covers all day? Because we know the living God. 

For the Christian, the best is always yet to come. Whether a day may realise your wildest dreams or your darkest nightmares, the best is always yet to come. Look at the book of Ruth. From the unspeakable tragedy of the death of her husband and two sons, life gets better and better for Naomi. She inherits Ruth, a hard working and faithful daughter in law. Her sons land is redeemed by Boaz, then she has a grandson...and then the end of Ruth takes us far beyond the limits of Bethlehem in the time of the Judges, to the eternal plan of God in Christ. For Naomi, even at the end of the book, bouncing her grandson on her knee, the best was still yet to come. The same is true for us today. The best is yet to come. More experiences that Christ will work for our good, more opportunities to grow in our relationship with Him, and, at the end, Heaven, which will get better and better each day.

This logic leads us to the second line. We know when we awake, that there's nothing that can happen that will stop us singing at evening time. John Piper calls this 'faith in future grace.' The knowledge that Christ will never leave us, and that He works all things to our good, gives us a joy and happiness that transcends our circumstances. A joy that is rooted deep in Christ's work, a joy that keeps burning when our happiness merely flickers. These verses understand that, and put them into song.

Christians sing because we can't help it. And i'm thankful for a song that puts so much precious theology onto our lips, and into our hearts...