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 a name: "the dark night of the soul." And if you’ve ever been there, you’ve probably asked the same question he did.
How long does this last?
The Many Ways the Night Finds Us
The dark night doesn’t arrive the same way for everyone.
For some, it comes through loss, a grief that lingers longer than expected.
For others, it comes through disappointment, prayers that didn’t unfold the way they hoped.
For many, it comes through exhaustion, not falling apart, just worn thin from carrying too much for too long.
Sometimes the night is connected to our own sinful choices and their consequences. Scripture is honest about that. But sometimes it arrives with no clear explanation at all.
However it comes, the same questions eventually rise to the surface:
Is this darkness the final word?
Is this how the story ends?
Or is there still a morning coming, even if I can’t see it yet?
Psalm 30 meets us right there. Not by denying the night, but by refusing to let the night have the last word.
A Song Written After the Night
Psalm 30 was written by David, a man who knew darkness firsthand. But this psalm is not written in the darkness. It is written after God brought him through.
That matters.
David doesn’t deny how deep the night went. But he refuses to let the night define the story. This is not raw lament. It is testimony. Psalm 30 teaches us not only what faith feels like in the dark, but how faith learns to speak after the night has passed.
David opens with praise:
“I will exalt you, Lord, for you rescued me. You refused to let my enemies triumph over me.” (Psalm 30:1, NLT)
He remembers how close things came to ending.
“You brought me up from the grave,” he says. “You kept me from falling into the pit of death.” (Psalm 30:3)
David does not minimize the night. But he also refuses to make it the main event. The night becomes the backdrop against which God’s faithfulness shines.
That’s why Psalm 30, verses 4 and 5 stand at the heart of the psalm:
“For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
This is not sentimental poetry. It is a theological claim.
The night is real.
The pain is real.
But the night is not in charge.
When the Night Exposes What We Were Trusting
Psalm 30 then takes an unexpected turn. David admits that before the night came, he thought he was secure.
“When I was prosperous, I said, ‘Nothing can stop me now!’” (v. 6)
David wasn’t rebelling against God. He hadn’t abandoned faith. But his confidence had quietly shifted. He had begun trusting the *results* of God’s favor more than God Himself.
When God withdrew that sense of stability, David says simply, “I was shattered.”
This wasn’t the night of judgment.
It was the night of exposure.
As the Apostle Paul later wrote:
“We were crushed and overwhelmed… so that we would not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Corinthians 1:8–9, NLT)
When God Gives Joy Back Its Voice
And then, without explanation or detail, David tells us what God did:
“You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.” (Psalm 30:11–12, NLT)
Joy here is not the absence of sorrow.
It is sorrow redeemed.
David does not work himself out of mourning. God turns it.
David does not decide to rejoice. God clothes him with joy.
And the purpose is clear: so that he will not be silent.
Silence marked the night. Praise marks the morning.
This pattern echoes throughout Scripture, from Joseph’s declaration in Genesis 50:20, to Isaiah’s promise of beauty for ashes, to the resurrection of Jesus Christ itself. The cross leads to silence. The tomb seals it. But God speaks the final word.
Joy comes, not as denial, but as testimony.
Living Between Night and Morning
Most of us live somewhere between darkness and daylight.
Some are still in the night, tired, waiting, holding on.
Some are seeing the first faint light of dawn.
Some can look back and say, “God really did bring me through.”
Psalm 30 tells us all of those places are normal for God’s people.
The night does not mean you have failed.
Waiting does not mean God is absent.
Silence does not mean the story is over.
The night doesn’t get the last word.
God does.
Three Faithful Responses While You Wait
Psalm 30 invites us into faithful obedience even when the night isn’t finished yet.
First: Tell God the truth about the night out loud.
David cried out honestly. Faithful prayer is not polished prayer.
Second: Refuse to let the night decide what is true about God.
Interpret the night through God’s character, not God’s character through the night.
Third: Stay open to joy without demanding it on your timetable.
Joy is God’s gift, not your assignment.
Psalm 30 does not promise that the night will be short.
It promises that the night will not be final.
And that is enough to keep going.
Because the same God who brought David through the night is still at work today.
And joy, real joy, still comes in the morning.
Dr. Bart Denny is the Lead Pastor of Pathway – A Wesleyan Church in Saranac, Michigan, and an adjunct instructor in Christian leadership and ministry. He is a retired U.S. Navy officer and has served in pastoral ministry in both revitalization and teaching contexts. His preaching and writing focus on Christ-centered faith, honest engagement with suffering, and faithful obedience in seasons when God seems silent.
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