Looking For Light in The Darkness
The past few years have been some of the most difficult years of our family’s lives. Since returning from Italy we’ve seemingly found ourselves wandering what’s felt like a never-ending wilderness. We search for a land that we thought God was preparing for us.
We have prayed. God has mostly remained silent.
We sought God for help. Little help came.
We tried to take steps in a variety of different directions. Each step met with a closed door.
We have faithfully tried to find God in the midst of what’s felt like years of uncertainty and bewilderment. The one thing we can confidently say we’ve heard over these years is “wait.” We’ve continually been asked to wait on God in anticipation of what he is doing.
And so we’ve waited, with little to go on.
The Invitation to Trust
It’s a difficult task, when God asks you to trust him and all you see around you is darkness. When it’s so dark you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, the questions and doubt rise up quickly. But the precedent of waiting and trusting despite what we see is a story throughout the Scriptures that seems to be a consistent one for God’s people.
Abram was asked to pack up and head to a land he knew not and promised that he’d be a father despite not having any children to speak of.
Noah was asked to build a boat in a place that hadn’t seen rain for years.
Joseph was brought to suffer in the bowels of a jail he was unjustly put in.
Elijah was asked to speak words of prophetic prediction to a king who would ultimately try to kill him.
Mary was chosen to bear the Christ-child despite all the implications that would come with that choice to say yes.
The list of saints down through the ages is full of people who were asked to trust…and to do so despite what they could see.
God’s people over the years are often brought to places of impossibility so that their faith would be proven by a God who deeply desires hearts to be aligned with his. When all you can see is darkness, the voice of God promises us that there is light. All reason and the myriad of voices around us tell us there is no light. Yet God beckons us to trust. “There is light,” so his voice softly proclaims.
Is There Light In the Darkness?
Ultimately it seems, this is the choice that God’s people have: believe that even the darkness is as light, or to surrender to the despair. One leads to a deeper knowing of God and one leads to its own demise. Make no mistake, when surrounded by nothing but darkness it can feel overwhelmingly bleak. Darkness that seems like an abyss of the unknown can be so disorienting you begin to lose which way is which.
It is only in the active belief and trust despite what you can actually see that faith is proved. It is in the active belief that our own “selves” are actually surrendered to God. When we release which way is up and we let go of where we think we ought to be, we begin to let go of our “self” and begin to rely on God. Complete trust is what God desires. It is only when we give ourselves over to complete trust that we begin to see the darkness actually transform into light. We begin to see as God sees. We begin to see God as He is. But not before.
A New Way of Seeing
Few people I know have actually surrendered themselves to this darkness. Few I know choose to believe God instead of their own reason. Many entertain the world’s voice that clamors “all is lost.” Most run headstrong the other way, choosing instead to go their own way. But the invitation it seems, is like a door. An opportunity is provided by God to step through into a new way of relating to him. The offer is there, but it requires everything of you. You can’t quasi surrender. When one sees nothing but darkness and yet still proclaims, “God, I trust you despite what I can see, if you say there’s light here, I will trust you still,” God is deeply pleased. It’s in this proclamation that light begins to dawn.
To be honest it’s a terrifying endeavor, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s actually as terrifying as one’s mind makes it seem. The world certainly doesn’t help. The voices of the world are inciting you to take what is yours and to pave your own path. God seems to be going in a completely different direction. The choice is set ever before the friends of God: go the way of the world and go it alone, or, go with God surrendering your whole self to him.
Entrust Your Journey To Him
Psalm 37 invites us to entrust our journeys to the Lord placing our whole hope in him. The Psalmist goes on to say, if you do this, God will act. He will show up. In the current season we find ourselves, truthfully I’ve yet to see him act. The choice for our family was made a long time ago. Our journey is and will be entrusted to him. We have no other hope. None. And so, we trust that somewhere in the darkness there is light.