As we draw closer to the Winter Solstice, the days are seeping light. Darkness falls over our homes, and sometimes our hearts, as the winter months settle in for a long and extended stay. For many of us, the waning light mirrors something of our interior world as well. Outside our windows and inside our hearts, the light grows dim we wonder if the night will swallow us whole.
Wherever you sense darkness in your life today, I’d like to help you search for the good things of God within it because there is, in fact, an abundance of light in the deep well of darkness.
Dark Beginnings
When shadows begin to fall on our minds, especially during the long winter months, they feel unwelcome and confusing. As if getting through the holidays, cold weather, shorter days and long stints of patience until spring reemerges isn’t hard enough, many of us have to do it with the weight of unease in our hearts as well.
Maybe you’re wrestling with God or with the fact that life doesn’t look like how you thought it would. Maybe you’re tired of fighting battles and putting out fires, all while in the midst of a global pandemic. Or maybe you’re like me, and the weight of winter just seems especially heavy this year. Whatever it is, when we first sense darkness settle over our spirits, it feels disorienting and we want nothing more than to move past it.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface
of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the
surface of the waters.” – Genesis 1:2
When God created the earth, it was covered by watery darkness. The Hebrew word for this darkness, ḥōšeḵ, also means “obscurity” and a “hidden place.” That puts a different spin on darkness, doesn’t it? What if the darkness you feel in your spirit is actually an invitation to meet God in a hidden place? What if the shadows are gifts of obscurity, shielding and protecting you?
Since God created darkness, He is in it. And if He is in it, then He is familiar with it and willing to walk with us through it. God is no stranger to hidden places because these hidden places are tucked away deep within His own heart.
Did you notice how God interacted with the darkness? He fluttered over it. When God created darkness, He didn’t retreat to His throne 10 million miles away and He sure didn’t sit back to observe it. He interacted with it. He hovered over it, lingering intimately with His beautiful, dark, obscure creation. If that’s how God interacted with darkness before the world or you or me were created, how much more does He desire to dive to the depths of our own darkness so that we are not alone in it, but feel the weight of His presence within it?
Engaging With God in Darkness
When Hard Things happen and the nights seem to never end, our compulsion is to find a way out. We grope for exit signs while silently enduring a spouse’s unending anger. We long for brighter days when the oppression of depression gets heavier by the hour and we even want to run from the God who we sense is allowing it all to happen in the first place.
What if the way out is not through escape but by pressing in? What if our darkness is a new place of discovery and communion with God, without which we’d never know the depths of our relationship with Jesus? If this rings true, there are ways to engage with the darkness that can actually bolster your life with God. As we learn to embrace and not run from our Hard Things, we can experience a whole new side of God that we’ve never known before.
Is it counterintuitive to embrace and sink into our heaviness of heart? You bet. Does slowly practicing this expand our emotional capacity and strengthen our spirituality? Oh, if you only knew.
If you’re intrigued by the idea of embracing the darkness you face to see if some hidden, obscure goodness with God awaits you, here are a few practices to try:
Compline Prayer
This prayer, traditionally found in the Book of Common Prayer, is used for the last service of the day in many churches. It holds beautiful, rich language that honors the literal and metaphorical nighttime. Better yet, attend a Compline service at a church near you.
Take a night walk
Ever walk under the moon and stars in your neighborhood? It’s an embodied way of embracing the literal night while walking through the shadowy parts of your own story and soul.
Light a candle
One of my favorite practices is to wake up long before the sun rises, light a candle and enjoy a few moments of silence, reminding myself that God is with me and that darkness is not dark to Him (Psalm 139:12).
Lament
Scripture gives us clear ways for how to engage our hard things and express our pain to God. Reading through Psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations, Jesus’ experience in the garden of Gethsemane, can be a helpful way of engaging your pain and inviting God to join you in it.
Need a little more guidance? I highly recommend reading Prayer in the Night and This Beautiful Truth. They shed much light on the beauty of darkness and are beautiful companions for anyone walking through Hard Things this season.
May you sense with increasing certainty that the goodness in darkness is available to you in Christ and that he will not leave you or forsake you in the night.
