Joy Comes in the Morning
Psalm 30 and the Dark Night of the Soul by Bart Denny, Ph.D. Some of the hardest seasons in life don’t arrive with drama. They don’t come with a phone call in the middle of the night, a diagnosis, or a single moment when everything obviously falls apart. Instead, they come quietly. They sneak up on us. Life keeps moving. We still get up in the morning. We still go to work. We still participate in family life and say what we’re supposed to say. From the outside, everything looks mostly normal. But inside, something feels off. You wake up tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix. Joy feels muted. Prayer feels thinner than it used to. And what unsettles you most is that you can’t point to a single reason why. There’s nothing obvious to fix, no clear problem to solve, no crisis to explain. You’re still praying. Still trusting God. But you find yourself wishing God felt closer. Wishing His voice seemed louder. Centuries ago, the Spanish friar and poet, Saint John of the Cross, gave this experience ...