Some days feel like walking through a long, cold night. Psalm 97:11 lifts our eyes by reminding us that God is not wasting any of it—He is actively planting light and gladness into the lives of those who belong to Him. Even when we see only shadows, He is quietly at work beneath the surface, preparing a harvest of joy for hearts that stay turned toward Him.

When God Buries Light Like Seed

Psalm 97:11 says, “Light is sown … for the righteous, and gladness … for the upright in heart”. That’s such a strange image—light isn’t usually “sown,” seed is. God is telling us that His light sometimes starts hidden, buried in the soil of our circumstances. It doesn’t always blaze instantly; it germinates in the dark. Just as “Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:5), so the tears you shed in faith become part of the planting season for future gladness.

This means that the emptiness you feel today is not the whole story. Your unanswered prayers, confusing detours, and quiet acts of obedience are all places where God is sowing something you cannot yet see. “For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). When you cannot trace the pattern, you can trust the Planter. He never puts a single seed of light in the ground that He does not intend to raise.

Righteousness: The Soil Where Light Grows

This promise is not vague and general. It is specifically aimed at “the righteous” and “the upright in heart.” Righteousness is first a gift—Christ’s righteousness credited to those who trust in Him. But it is also a path we walk, a daily choosing of His ways over our own. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Those who long to please God, who repent when they sin, who keep coming back to His Word—these are the ones in whose lives the planted light will break through.

And as we walk in practical obedience, the path itself grows brighter. “The path of the righteous is like the first light of dawn, shining brighter and brighter until the full day” (Proverbs 4:18). Think of it: every choice to forgive, to tell the truth, to turn away from temptation, to honor Christ when no one is watching—that is you tending the soil where God has already sown light. Holiness is not a grim chore; it is the warm, cleared field where God’s gladness grows tall.

Walking in the Light You Cannot Yet See

So how do you live when what you feel is darkness, but what God says is light? You keep your eyes on the One who is Light Himself. Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Following Him means trusting His voice over your emotions, His promises over your perceptions, His character over your confusion.

That trust becomes very practical. You open your Bible when you feel nothing, because “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). You thank Him in advance for the gladness yet to rise. You choose faith instead of cynicism, prayer instead of worry, worship instead of complaint. Today, step forward as if God really has sown light into this very season—because He has.

Lord, thank You for sowing light and gladness even in my darkest places. Help me to walk in righteousness and follow Jesus today, trusting You to bring to harvest every seed of light You have planted in my life.

Lack of balance in the Christian life is often the direct consequence of overemphasis on certain favorite texts, with a corresponding underemphasis on other related ones. For it is not denial only that makes a truth void; failure to emphasize it will in the long run be equally damaging. And this puts us in the odd position of holding a truth theoretically while we make it of no effect by neglecting it in practice. Unused truth becomes as useless as an unused muscle. Sometimes our dogmatic insistence upon "It is written" and our refusal to hear "Again it is written" makes heretics of us, our heresy being the noncreedal variety which does not rouse the opposition of the theologians. One example of this is the teaching that crops up now and again having to do with confession of sin. It goes like this: Christ died for our sins, not only for all we have committed but for all we may yet commit for the remainder of our lives. When we accept Christ we receive the benefit of everything He did for us in His dying and rising again. In Christ all our current sins are forgiven beforehand. It is therefore unnecessary for us to confess our sins. In Christ they are already forgiven. Now, this is completely wrong, and it is all the more wrong because it is half right. It is true that Christ died for all our sins, but it is not true that because Christ died for all our sins we need not confess that we have sinned when we have. This conclusion does not follow from that premise.

She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God. - Zephaniah 3:2

"If any man will open the door" - the door has no handle on the outside. It opens from within. Christ knocks; we open. I do not need to plunge into metaphysics: it is a plain fact that men can, and that men do, reject all this pleading love and meek patience of the beseeching Christ. It is the history of the lives of some of us; hundreds of times we have done it, and have settled ourselves into the attitude and habit of doing it. Do not be sophisticated out of the recognition of the fact that it is your fault if you are not a Christian by any quasi-philosophical theory about responsibility and the like. "If any man open the door," says Christ. The man has to open it; and if the man does not open it, it stops shut.

And how do you open it? If, when He comes to you and says, "Child! thou art sinful; I have died for thee! trust thyself to Me," thou sayest, "Amen! Lord, I trust"; thou hast opened the door. What we call faith - by which we simply mean the yielding of ourselves to Him, and the leaning upon His finished work and His mighty love and His Divine person for our salvation and our purity and our all- is the opening of the door. We open when in faith we yield the will, and say to Him, " Come in, Thou Blessed of the Father! "

And oh! is it not plain that that simple condition is a condition not imposed by any arbitrary action on His part, but a condition indispensable from the very nature of the case? A man cannot get these Divine blessings if He does not want them. You take a hermetically sealed bottle, and put it into the sea; it may float about in mid-ocean for a century, surrounded by a shoreless ocean, and it will be as dry and empty inside at the end as it was at the beginning. So you and I float, live, move, and have our being in that great ocean of the Divine love in Christ; but you can cork up your hearts, and wax them over with an impenetrable cover, through which that grace does not come. And you do do it, some of you. If you are doing that, your heart must remain barred to His entrance. There is nothing for it but that if you do not let Christ come in, He must stop outside; and if He stops outside, there stop out with Him all the blessings that He brings. If you do not believe yourself to be a sinner, you will never feel that you want pardon; if you do not feel that you want pardon, you will never take Him for your Saviour; if you do not take Him for your Saviour, you cannot be saved. God cannot do it, and Christ cannot do it. They have done all they could for you; and He stands before the world and says: "Judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and My vineyard. What could have been done more to it that I have not done in it? " He has done all He could. Oh, my brother! open the door, and the great rejoicing tide shall flow in and flood your heart. " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved."