"The dew distils in darkness. Not in the darkness of external trial alone. It is easy to understand that, and most of us have experienced it. The beautiful thing is that the life-giving speech distils even in soul darkness. "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that walketh in darkness and hath no light?
Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his God." There are times when we simply cannot see anything, when there is nothing for it but to hold on and trust in the dark; times when we do not seem even to be walking in the dark, but when, like Micah, we "sit in darkness," too feeble even to grope....
"Just so His words are silently falling on your souls in the darkness, and preparing them for the day. They do not come with any sensible power, nothing flashes out from the page as at other times, nothing shines so as to shed any light light on your path, you do not hear any sound of abundance of rain. You seem as if you could not take the words in; and if you could, your mind is too weary to meditate on them. But they arc distilling as the dew all the time!
"Do not quarrel with the invisible dew because it is not a visible shower. The Lord would send a shower if that was the true need to be supplied to His vineyard; but as He is sending His speech in another form, you may be quite sure it is because He is supplying your true need thereby. You cannot see why it is so, and I do not pretend to explain; but what does that matter! He knows which way to water His vineyard. These words of His, which you are remembering so feebly, or reading without
being able to grasp, are not going to return void. They are doing His own work on your soul, only in quite a different way to what you would choose....
"Dryness is more to be dreaded than darkness. Only let us be trustfully content to let this dew of heaven fall in the dark, and when we cannot hear or see, recollect that He says, "My speech shall distil as the dew." Our part is to believe this, and leave ourselves open to it as we read what perhaps seems a very dim page of the Bible with very tired eyes; or, perhaps, lie still through the long hours of a literal night, with no power to meditate on the fitful gleams of half recollected verses that just cross our minds and seem to leave no trace. Never mind, the dew is falling!"
- The Dew of the Word, by Frances Ridley Havergal
Excerpt from Starlight Through the Shadows pp. 23-29. (c) 1889
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