“…even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day…”
~ Psalm 139:12 ~
The hardest thing God ever asked me to do was to embrace darkness.
No, not evil. For that, I’ve learned, I don’t need an invitation, divine or otherwise. And I find many are the same. Craving the crass and corroded fruit of a world shadowed with envy and malice, we seize our treasures, greedily retreat to our lairs, and trust evil’s darkness to cover our tracks allowing none to follow. All without invitation. Just muscle memory. Bodies and souls nurtured by the nectar of sin and death.
Even still, I hear God’s whisper as he woos, Shane, embrace darkness. Embrace a darkness that knows no evil. A darkness void of the craven and purged of all impurities. A darkness undefiled by selfishness and every species of evil. A darkness created by God and called good. Just as it was “in the beginning.”
Although evil commandeered darkness in Genesis 3, in Genesis 1, on the first day of creation, God created darkness. Yes, God created light, but just after, or maybe simultaneously with, God whispered, “And let there be darkness.” Evil did not create it. God did. On day one. And he called it “good.”
And to my surprise and dismay, he still does. He still calls darkness good. He still bestows blessing on it and through it. He still employs darkness in his divine strategy to make all things new. To set the wrongs right.
And I hate that. Deeply struggle with it.
The darkness in my soul is cavernous, almost more luminescent than the light. I struggle, at times, to find much light within. Maybe the flicker of a lantern dancing on the cave walls, but nothing like the earth’s beloved sun.
So, I fear searching within. Fervently seek distraction outside myself, be it busy-ness or laziness, overstimulation or acedia—it all serves a similar purpose: justify my disobedience to God’s command to embrace darkness. To befriend darkness. To descend into the mystery of night not counter to the day but interwoven in it.
I just don’t trust Him enough to clothe myself in shadow. I run from darkness, hiding, ironically, in vulnerability, full transparency. Revealing all, concealing little, refusing to let darkness blanket a single secret. Rebuffing the presence of darkness as a vile predator preying on the weak who cower behind passcodes and privacy.
Yet God corrects: “Secrets,” he whispers, “distorts the blessing of darkness, my beloved.”
God’s directive to embrace darkness shuns secrecy even as it summons me to the secret place hidden in the intersection of me and the image of God within. God’s command, then, is an invitation to a haven of intimacy, a refuge of rest as safe as the darkness that shrouds a child’s eyes as they bury their head in their mother’s chest after a nightmare. Eyes tightly shut, in the arms of grace, darkness coffins our eyes. And all is well.
“But why Lord?” I argue. “Why embrace darkness? What does darkness contain that I can’t see? That I’m too blind to embrace? Too stubborn to behold?”
My fear of darkness seems married to my fear of death. The final closing of my eyes. A sacred passage all will embrace even if everyone works to deny. The darkness of the tomb is suffocating, even as I walk in the brilliance of life’s long day. I know God betrothed light to darkness, melding the two into one flesh. Yet, I struggle to find the divine solstice that perfectly balances God’s light with the darkness he demands I embrace.
As I struggle, scriptures come to my mind and my defense, “Yes, God, but doesn’t it say somewhere that even darkness is not dark to you but night as bright as day? I mean, that’s not just lyrical, right? It seems like your presence eradicates darkness not sustain it. Right?”
Oh shoot, maybe that moves my heart a bit closer to what you’re trying to teach me.
I remember as a child playing outside for hours on end, not required to return home until night began to replace the day. Or until I heard my mom’s supernaturally loud whistle echoing off the homes on our street. Bikes, sandboxes, sports, and imagination filled the void of each day with wonder and adventure.
I’d experiment with water patterns on the sidewalk, rocks ricocheting off the asphalt, and even lay siege to cities of ants. I think I got that last idea from a cartoon, or maybe just my fiendish fallen nature. My friend, though, had a magnifying glass, and my yard had several pronounced ant villages. Harnessing the light of the sun, I concentrated its heat on the bustling ant-tropolis, attempting to taste the flavor of dominance, wielding power like a tyrant, or a run-of-the-mill adult.
After several unsuccessful attempts, I turned the magnifying glass over a few times, inspecting the torturous tool. No flaws were detected, so I turned my gaze to the sun to see if it had fallen into disrepair. It’s the first time I remember staring into the sun. Undeterred by its brilliance, I searched it intently. At first a bit confused, then gradually just enamored. It was beautiful and painful. Captivating and curious. The sun’s radiance invited inspection and yet veiled the celestial body with impenetrable light.
After several long moments, I turned my eyes back toward the anthills only to find my view obstructed by pulsating black spots. Panicked, I looked to the street then to my bike then to my house, unable to evade the blindness birthed by staring too intently into the sun’s light. Light that had, oddly enough, darkened my vision, even if only partially and temporarily.
Memories, at times, speak with a divine tongue. Reminding us not just of what’s been but translating what God is saying right now.
“Embrace the darkness, my beloved. Darkness not produced by the absence of light. But darkness birthed by light that has drawn near.”
Extreme darkness and extreme light hold the same in common: they blind God’s beloved, heightening other senses deadened by sight. Senses that move us beyond sense so that we can commune with the divine. With Spirit. With Truth.
Maybe this is why I love to close my eyes in worship. Entombing my senses so that I can commune with the fullness of the first day of creation. A setting balanced by light, darkness, and the in between. Not a balance as trivial as equal opposites, but an interlacing of two elements created by God. Sunsets seem to preserve the beauty of the intercourse of day and darkness. A moment when, for those with eyes to see, all stands still, colored with shades uncommon and impossible to capture. The “golden hour,” some have named it, preserves the unity of light and night that I don’t treasure in my own soul.
I avoid the shadowland within me, not believing it deepens the intimacy with my Good Shepherd. But perceiving it as a villainous distortion of our love. So I run. Attempting to banish darkness from God’s good creation. Only to find darkness has a legal right to the land.
“Embrace darkness, my beloved. For there is no where to run where I will not find you. No where to journey where you will not find me.”
Panicked, I cower in death’s shadow, forgetting to bloody the frames of my door. Darkness descends and finds me exposed, uncovered by the shadow of his wings.
“Embrace darkness, my beloved, for in darkness, all is laid bare. Nothing concealed. In the sacred space of my womb, darkness creates you. Re-creates you. Makes you new in my mercy and through my grace, both of which knows not day or night, only sunsets of love.”
Darkness is good when it focuses our heart-mind on what is everlasting removing the many distractions in our overwhelmed lives.
Darkness is good when it swaddles us in the warm embrace of the God of the universe.
Darkness is good when like a sunset it sets to rest the pain and struggles of the day and reminds us of a new day coming.
Darkness is good when it brings our heart-mind to lament the brokenness within and the brokenness around us.
"Hello darkness my old friend". Friend? Not when I was young!
I was a bed wetter because I was afraid of the dark. Then, in August just before entering 6th grade I broke out in a terrible rash. I was covered from my head to my toes. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep. So, I would get up into the dark bedroom I shared with my older brother and pace the floor. Thankfully my brother was a heavy sleeper. I discovered that there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark. I no longer wet the bed.
I started enjoying the dark outside. I became a stargazer, searching for Heaven. I would pretend I was flying in its darkness. I enjoy the night. I will stand in the night listening to the sounds I couldn't see. Sunsets introduce the darkness and sunrises declare the end. Both beautifully.
The darkness within me is something very different. That is where my fears, sorrows, selfishness, greed, and lust lives. When I am there, that's where my failures drag me down. It is then when I need light to chase the darkness away. I would try to do this on my own, but would only add to my failures. I knew God was there to be the light, but only turned to Him for continuing help just a few years ago. Now the darkness within me can be held back so that I can really enjoy the glory of God's darkness.