The darkness is not winning. It is providing contrast. The darker the backdrop — the more visible the glory becomes.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 3 of The Gloaming Hour, we open Romans 13, Isaiah 60, and Luke 21 and talk about what it means to be awake to the hour we are actually living in. Not with fear. Not with despair. But with the eyes of someone who knows that the deepening gloaming means the morning is closer than it has ever been.

You have been trying to name it for years. That ache that nothing quite reaches. That restlessness that settles in even when life is good. C.S. Lewis called it an inconsolable longing — and he said the fact that we feel it at all is proof we were made for somewhere else.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 2 of The Gloaming Hour, we talk about what it means to be homesick for a place you have never been — and why the One who planted that longing in you has already gone ahead to prepare the place that will finally quiet it.

A pink and lavender sky. A little girl who looked up and said — oh wow, Jesus is coming back soon. And a father standing next to her who looked at the same sky and saw beautiful weather.

Today on The Daily Stand we begin a five-day series called The Gloaming Hour — and Day 1 asks one simple question: when did we stop seeing what our children still see?

There is a lie that every dark season tells. It tells you that the distance you feel is real. That God has looked away. That somehow the weight of what you are carrying has put you somewhere outside His reach.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 5 of In the Dark, we open Psalm 139 and answer that lie with one of the most quietly revolutionary sentences in all of Scripture — darkness and light are the same to Him. He sees you this morning exactly as clearly as He has ever seen you.

Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost. That is not a crisis of faith. That is a prayer — and God preserved it in Scripture for three thousand years.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 4 of In the Dark, we walk all the way to the bottom of Lamentations with Jeremiah and find the one word waiting for us there that makes the difference between bitterness and hope. Yet.

We don't reach out because we don't want to be a burden. Because we've been burned before by someone who turned our pain into a project. Because we're not sure anyone will really understand.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 3 of In the Dark, we name those reasons honestly — and then talk about what it looks like to make one phone call, send one text, and say the most important five words you might say this week: I need someone to know.

There is a version of faith that performs fine even when it isn't. That keeps the hard prayers private and only lets people see the triumphant ones.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 2 of In the Dark, we talk about what it costs to pray the honest prayer — and why your willingness to be honest about your own dark seasons might be the most important thing you do for the people around you.

Sometimes the weight of being a human being in a broken world just settles on you. The joy that used to come easily doesn't come as easily anymore. And you wake up some mornings wondering when things are going to feel different.

Today on The Daily Stand we begin a six-day series on depression and the blues — honest, pastoral, and grounded in the truth that you are not the first person to feel this way. Not even close.

We live in a world that wants the comfort of Jesus without the cost of surrender. The inspiration without the obedience. The community without the commitment.

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 5 of Called, we talk about the two marks that separate the curious from the committed — and ask the question most of us have been quietly avoiding: have you actually crossed the line?

Is there someone in your life right now that you are intentionally walking with — not just running into, not just being friendly toward — but actually investing in? Someone whose growth in Christ you are taking personal responsibility for?

Today on The Daily Stand, Day 4 of Called, we talk about what it means to make disciples, why it looks more like labor pains than a program, and why you don't have to disciple a nation. You just have to start with one.