Anyone can sing when the sun is shining. When your cup overflows, inspiration comes easy. When success rolls in like waves, anyone can praise the God who sends the harvest or fills the bank account. A wind chime makes music when the breeze blows—the hard part is making music in dead air.

It's easy to sing when you can read the sheet music by daylight. But the true musician sings when there's not a single ray of light to see by—who sings from his heart.

Listen to me: No man can make a song in the night by himself. He may attempt it, but he will find that songs in the night must be divinely inspired. When everything's going my way, I can weave melodies from the flowers along my path. But drop me in a desert where nothing green grows, and how shall I frame a hymn of praise to God? How shall a mortal man make a crown for the Lord when there are no jewels?

Give me a clear voice and a healthy body, and I'll sing God's praise all day long. But silence my tongue, lay me on the bed of languishing, and how shall I then chant God's high praises unless he himself gives me the song? No! It is not in man's power to sing when all is adverse, unless an altar-coal shall touch his lips.

What a divine song Habakkuk sang in his midnight hour! "Though the fig tree doesn't blossom, though there's no fruit on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields yield no meat, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there's no herd in the stalls—yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will joy in the God of my salvation!"

Since our Maker gives songs in the night, let us wait upon him for the music. O thou chief musician, let us not remain songless because affliction is upon us, but tune thou our lips to the melody of thanksgiving.