How many times have you awakened in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep because of a prevailing situation that was praying on your mind? I am not sure that my Friday night deluge was a prevailing situation....it was more a horrendous nightmare. By the time I awoke at 3 a.m. I had real moisture running down my face. Somewhere between reality and the dream world I was crying. Our house sits in a pasture. In my dream Frank was helping our neighbor Keith cut hay since his son, Chris had had an accident and was not able to help his dad. I was at work....Frank fell into part of the machinery that is used for cutting hay. I was notified at work....alone....that it was serious.....and that they had airlifted Frank to East Alabama Medical Center.....and it was bad. I jumped in my car....no one went with me....and headed the forty-five miles to where my husband was. Keith met me outside the ER. He was crying....and all he could say was that he was sorry. Everywhere I turned in the ER...members of the Rock Mills congregation met me....preventing me from going through the doors. They were all crying....and they were all saying they were sorry. I never made it through the doors. I woke up.....with a very wet face and pillow. I was so shaken that I got up and went to the living room where I turned on the lights and just prayed. My hands were shaking too badly to crochet....so I just sat and prayed. I got up three times and checked to see if Frank was ok. By the time he woke at 5 I was beginning to settle down.....some. I have always had vivid dreams. Sometimes they are good....other times they are bad or warnings of something that is to come. I'd guess that much of the time when you can't sleep there is something troubling you. I know that is the case with me. Mosts of the time I have some deep seeded issue I have not turned over to God. I can guarantee you that it is always some event or problem that has had or you are afraid will have a negative impact on you. So where does all this negativity come from? That is simple.... it is some of Satans handiwork. Yep, the devil makes you do it. He does his best work in the dark. At least he does in my dark. In C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters we read about a classic example of Satan's work in the dark. Writing to his nephew, Wormwood, an up-and-coming devil, about how to continue to confuse and mis-direct Christians the devil Screwtape says, "You can waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You keep him up late at night, not roistering but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down her. 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I like.' " So nighttime is when Satan does some of his best, or worst for us, work. He keeps you up worrying. He makes sure that negative things occupy your mind. In dark rooms and dim lighting you can see as well, so your thinking is often unclear, murky, unreal. He does not like for light to shine on his sinister operation being fearful that it will be exposed for what it is. I know this. I was never so glad to see daylight come. Psalm 30:5(b) says, "Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning." All I can say is thank you Lord for dispelling my darkest fears by shining your eternal light on them. Can I get an Amen? On Saturday night I slept well because I knew that God had me covered.
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