「我想起我夜間的歌曲。」－詩篇77:6
許多人也得等到夜色昏暗，才學會如何歌唱。就像傳說中，夜鶯的胸口被荊棘扎破後，牠才肯引吭高唱。
在聖經中，天使的頌歌是在夜間傳出的；「新郎來了，你們出來迎接他」的消息，也是在深夜時傳來的。（馬太福音25:6）
一個人若沒有經過黑暗籠罩的時日，沒有人相信他能領會神的愛大無極。
光照耀自黑暗，夜晚孕育著晨光。
記者克里曼在一趟尋訪塞爾維亞的女王娜塔麗的旅程中，在信裡寫下了一段他難忘的經歷：
「直到今天，我才知道著名的玫瑰精油是採自巴爾幹的深山中。
最值得一提的是，當地採花的居民是在清晨一點到兩點之間完成所有的採集。我本以為這是傳之已久的迷信遺風，後來我才知道，經科學家實驗證明，受過日曬後的玫瑰竟會失去百分之四十的香味。」－麥里奧
"I call to remembrance my song in the night" (Psalm 77:6).I have read somewhere of a little bird that will never sing the melody his master wishes while his cage is full of light. He learns a snatch of this, a bar of that, but never an entire song of its own until the cage is covered and the morning beams shut out.
A good many people never learn to sing until the darkling shadows fall. The fabled nightingale carols with his breast against a thorn. It was in the night that the song of the angels was heard. It was at midnight that the cry came, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."
Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the love of God in its richness and in its comforting, satisfying completeness until the skies are black and lowering.
Light comes out of darkness, morning out of the womb of the night.
James Creelman, in one of his letters, describes his trip through the Balkan States in search of Natalie, the exiled Queen of Serbia.
"In that memorable journey," he says, "I learned for the first time that the world's supply of attar of roses comes from the Balkan Mountains. And the thing that interested me most," he goes on, "is that the roses must be gathered in the darkest hours. The pickers start out at one o'clock and finish picking them at two.
"At first it seemed to me a relic of superstition; but I investigated the picturesque mystery, and learned that actual scientific tests had proven that fully forty per cent of the fragrance of roses disappeared in the light of day."
And in human life and human culture that is not a playful, fanciful conceit; it is a real veritable fact. -Malcolm J. McLeod
