Light Up My Eyes! A Brief Meditation on Darkness and Light in Psalm 13

Darkness:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Psalm 13:1-2

Light (!):

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalm 13:5-6

What happened to bring David out of the darkness and into this light? God's decisive action in response to David's prayer.

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy says, "I have prevailed over him,"
lest my enemies rejoice because I am shaken.
Psalm 13:3-4 (emphasis added)

Light up my eyes! That is the essence of David's prayer. The problem in David's life isn't that there is no light. The problem is that he can't see the light. The problem is with his perception. The light is there! But only God can enable him to see it by faith. And the testimony of this psalm is that God does enable him to see it by faith!

Apart from God's decisive action to light up our eyes by giving us faith, our natural tendency every day is to see darkness.

Which is why Paul prays for the church at Ephesus (and for the entire church of Jesus Christ):

...that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened (that He would light up your eyes!), [so] that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
Ephesians 1:17-21