A reflection by The Rev’d Dr Lynn Arnold AO

Oh, night that was my guide!

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

So reads Genesis 1:5 and thereby explains why in the Jewish calendar a day starts at nightfall and finishes at the end of daylight the following day.

Even though we are now nine days into the new year – 2022 – I don’t think it is too late for me to wish you a Happy New Year. But in the wake of all that has preceded this new year in the previous two, whilst we may wish for this coming year to be happy, I know we all feel very uncertain. So maybe, in the context of the difficult times which have dominated our lives, there can be some solace to be had from considering that a day should be counted starting from its darkest hours first as in the Jewish calendar.

It is natural that human beings often regard night with some apprehension. Our own evening prayer liturgy contains such phrases as:

Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

And:

Protect us while we sleep.

While in our childhood prayers of years ago we may have drawn upon the old Cornish prayer:

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night. Good Lord deliver us!

Yet, for all of this fearfulness, it is just as possible that from the night we may also draw spiritual succour which may enable us to see more splendidly God’s majesty in the dawn that will break in the coming hours. One of our hymns tonight, The Day Thou givest Lord has ended, puts it perfectly about spiritual succour through the night when we will sing:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

And then this verse from a favourite hymn of mine which I would have liked us to sing tonigh Now the Day is over, Night is drawing nigh, speaks of that dawn which then will break:

When the morning wakens,
Then may I arise
Pure and fresh and sinless
In your holy eyes.

It is not just that we have such sayings as ‘it is darkest before the dawn’ that encourage us not to fear the night, but that we may discover the deep solace which it can offer. St John of the Cross particularly appreciated that solace when from the darkness of his prison cell he wrote:

Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each into the other. [Pp27-9]

Looking at the night in this way may help to strength us as we go through metaphorical night-times in our lives. In wishing my family and I a Happy New Year, a cousin of mine, Shelley Brown wrote from South Africa:

May we be given the strength to cope with what 2022 brings.” But every year brings moments of joy – may there be many of those.

And added words from The Gate of the Year, a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, the first verse of which was quoted by King George VI on New Year’s Eve 1939, as the world stood on the precipice of the Second World War:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown …
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.

[The complete poem is included below]

It is not only the night of each twenty-four hour period where we may reach out for the Hand of God to help us trod gladly forth, nor even the metaphorical night-times we endure through life, but there is also that night which draws our whole lives to a close as we each, through Christ, await our own Easter Day. Thinking about this spiritual night through which our lives must pass in order to enter Eternity, I reflected on Stefan Zweig’s beautiful description of the passing of Georg Handel, in his book Decisive Moments in History. Zweig described a performance of Handel’s Messiah which the composer himself had conducted in the last weeks of his life. By then blind and having traversed through a lifetime of nights of spiritual yearning, Handel mounted the conductors’ podium and then, Zweig wrote:

 …there he stood, the giant, blind man amid his faithful friends, amid the musicians and the singers. His empty, lightless eyes could not see them. But now when the notes rolled toward him with great, rushing vivacity, when the jubilation of certainty swelled toward him like a hurricane of a hundred voices, the weary face lit up and became bright. He swung his arms to the beat, he sang along as earnestly and piously as if he were standing as a priest at the head of his own coffin, praying with all of them for his own salvation and that of everyone. Only once, when the trumpets began sharply at the call ‘the trumpet shall sound,’ did he start and look upward with his vacant eyes, as if he were then already prepared for the Final Judgment. P82

Exhausted by the performance, Handel took to his bed. I continue with Zweig’s telling of the story:

On the 13^th April Handel’s strength left him. He no longer saw, he no longer heard anything. The massive body lay motionless among the pillows, an empty, heavy casing. But just as the empty sea-shell roars with the thunder of the ocean, inaudible music whispered inside him, more strangely and magnificent than he had ever heard it before. Its pressing swell slowly separated the soul from the exhausted body, to carry it upward into weightlessness. Flood into flood, eternal strains into the eternal sphere. And on the next day – the Easter Bells had not yet awakened – the mortal part of George Frederick Handel finally died. [Pp82-3]

God bless you as this calendar night falls and may He keep you by the hand as you traverse whatever metaphorical nights ahead may come; but most of all, may you keep Him deep in your heart so that, in God’s timing we may sing with Handel from his oratorio those words from 1 Corinthians 15:54:

Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

THE GATE OF THE YEAR by Minnie Louise Haskins, read by Kg George VI

(Originally titled ‘God Knows’)

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
 From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.