The God Who Sings While You Sleep

Yahweh, your God, is among you, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will calm you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, WEB)

It is not hard to picture God tolerating you. With enough effort you can imagine him forgiving you, perhaps sternly, with a look that says he is doing it but you should not push your luck. What almost no man in this fight can picture is God being glad about him, actually delighting in his presence, wanting him near for the simple pleasure of it.

And yet the prophet describes God in exactly those terms. Zephaniah writes, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Read that again slowly. He rejoices over you. He sings. This is not the language of a disappointed employer keeping a tired eye on a poor worker; it is the language of a father over a child he adores.

The line about quieting you by his love is tender in a way we hardly let ourselves feel. God knows the noise inside you, the accusations, the restlessness, the shame that will not settle no matter how late it gets. His way of dealing with all that noise is not to shout you down, not to add his voice to the ones already condemning you. His way is to quiet you with love, the way a father settles a child who cannot stop crying.

You are not merely permitted in his presence, tolerated at the edge of the room. You are enjoyed there, welcomed, sung over. That is a picture worth carrying into the dark, when your own thoughts turn loudest and the day's failures replay themselves. Tonight, let this picture sit with you: God near, God saving, God quieting the noise, God singing over you while you sleep, and let his gladness be the last thing you hear before your own accusations get the last word.