It Happened at Midnight.

When Moses announced the looming annihilation of each family’s oldest son, the LORD offered information He had not provided in any previous plague. The Lord gave them a time, but He did not offer the Pharaoh a date. “At midnight” some midnight, a midnight the Lord would pass through the land. Death would be the natural result.

For some reason God determined it was important to communicate the time. Why was that detail significant? Why wasn’t it enough to simply say it would happen in the night? Why did the hour matter in an age without atomic clocks or cell phones to manage schedules? Only the Lord knew the precise moment of midnight and only the Hebrews had been given a date. Why tell Egypt to look at a clock if they had not first seen a calendar? Maybe that was exactly the point.

The word translated midnight literally means divided or halved. Think of it as the point where night is parted, like a sea. In the first half of the night everything grows darker. Brightness fades. During the second half, creation moves closer to the light. Between the two halves is that moment when the night can grow no darker before dawn begins to show itself. Only the LORD could calculate that exact moment or, if He chose to, cause the entire universe to wait in place while He poured out judgement.

Because they rejected and ignored His mercy at midday, God moved against Pharaoh’s land striking it when people feel the most defenseless, in the darkness. When shadows disappeared into darkness, when the night could grow no darker and light could draw no further away, that was when the LORD revealed Himself in Egypt. Before the dawn could begin to arrive, the LORD would achieve justice for slaves in that instant.

As Egypt was shattered, the Israelites were rescued. Isn’t that when the Lord most often reveals Himself in our own lives, in our bleakest moments? This truth is bigger than any specific night. The LORD is with us in our midnights. He is greater than our gloomiest hours. Where the darkness of our lives can grow no darker, God’s love for us is revealed. When He shows up, shadows are vanquished. Darkness is destroyed. Light begins to return. No midnight we face is too great for the one who conquered the grave to overcome. That is Worth Remembering.