Held in the Dark

I heard a sermon in which the preacher included a story about his young daughter who recently began to walk and spoke only a few words. She’d just learned to close doors and was bent to close each one in the house. But she hadn’t yet learned to open them. The father was sitting on the couch and listening to the pitter-patter of her little feet. He knew where she was heading. Through the kitchen and to the interior laundry room where he knew there was no window. There she went straight into the laundry room and tested her new door-closing skills. Except, when she closed this door, suddenly she was shut inside a strange room in the dark and didn’t know how to get out. Of course the father followed her and before he rescued her, he heard quietly from the other side of the door: “Dada…?” It was one of her first learned words, and the way she said it could be summarized by her father as: Dad, are you still there? I got myself stuck. I’m in the dark, and I’m alone. Please help. But she wasn’t alone. The doting father opened the door, flooded the room with light, and swooped her up into his arms and said: “I’m here.”

 

It was such a sweet analogy of how we as people so often get stuck or entrapped in dark places, and how our loving Heavenly Father moves in to rescue us. He opens the door, fills the space with light, and swoops us up into his arms to save us from our gloom.

 

But as beautiful as the story was, including the lovely way it was presented, there was something about it that troubled me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I hardly sat still in my seat because of the unrest I felt in my spirit. And then it dawned on me. I know too many people who had terrible upbringings, parents who were less than caring, and some who had no real parenting at all. There was little security or knowledge that there was someone there to scoop them up out of the dark. A hero figure on who they could depend.

 

So although a sweet and insightful analogy, the story might not be relatable to some people. You might be someone who finds it hard to believe there is anyone who cares about you at all – when it feels like you’ve been left in the dark for good… or at least a long while. So it got me thinking of dark spaces, or seasons, not just as children but anytime in life—because as humans, we will have our experiences when we suffer in the murky shadows of a less-than-ideal situation.

 

God is a miracle worker. He can and will sometimes change the outcome of an ugly situation instantaneously. But I think more often, the ugly situation becomes a rough wilderness place to endure, a deserted landscape that looks bleak, hopeless, and endless. It goes on and on… Will this ever end? Where is the light? Where is hope? Where is the other side of ugly? When it feels like everything is rotten and nothing is right or good.

 

But there is one positive spin about it. It can be the pivotal point to transformation. We can learn to lay everything down where our will, interests, desires become secondary to survival. At that point, you just want out. You want relief, whatever that means. You’re in survival mode. As terrible and as stripped down and desperate as that place is, it’s necessary for genuine and complete change to happen.

 

Yet what if survival mode feels overwhelming, along with the vulnerability the darkness has caused you? Like you don’t have a chance because it seems as if divine forces have allowed dark disruption. This bears the sobering thought that if God is sovereign, then he would have had to consent to certain things. Because nothing would get past him. He is omniscient, all-knowing. He is omnipotent, all-powerful. He is omnipresent, ever-present everywhere. Then why would he do that, allow us to walk into, or suffer, a dark domain? When angels of the Lord broaden their circle of protection so it feels like help and security are far away? Might it be because he gave us our own two feet to walk, or minds to decide, hearts to feel what we want when we want it? Or what if while you were an adolescent, or perhaps an adult victim of domestic violence, you suffered at the hands of an abuser who was supposed to take care of you? Yet they, acting out their own dark demons, caused your suffering. Crimes against a truly innocent victim.

 

In that knowledge of loss and grief, do you withdraw into a deeper darker hole and let darkness suffocate you? Or do you whisper in the clouds your mind…

 

Dada?

 

~Psalm 119:50: “My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life.”

 

God is full of it. Promise, that is. Because he is also omnibenevolent, perfectly good and loving. And he yearns to rescue you. Desires to hold you close. Is itching to dispel the darkness that surrounds you. He’s readied at the sound of his name by your lips – or in your mind if you’re too weak to speak. Dada…?

 

Maybe you’re someone who suffered during your childhood. You can’t relate to an earthly father who loved you unconditionally, dotingly listened to your every move and made themselves ready to rescue you from any and every potentially injurious thing. Maybe you don’t know what’s it’s like to have a relatively normal or unbroken family, or the security that comes from having “a village” surround you with support. But I do know that there is a Father in Heaven who waits to be those things to you, desires to be those things for you, wants to bail you out and help you with everything in your life—including healing the memories that plague you and the ugly voices that hurt you.

 

But the truth is, he promises to rescue us from our doom but not necessarily from our gloom. Sometimes he allows us to live through terrible things, even as innocent children who’d done nothing wrong and didn’t deserve cruelty or alienation from those who were meant to be “loved ones” or kin. Awareness sometimes means we have to make a decision to climb out rather than wait for a rescue. When it takes forgetting how you feel – or the numbness from feeling too much. Make a decision, the crucial choice. I don’t know or understand why one soul is allowed to suffer in greater and more tragic ways than another. I don’t have the answers I wish I had for the roots and causes for things, other than there is an enemy who hates you. I tend to believe that those who have the greatest to lose, those who have been gifted with something so powerful and special, a purpose-filled anointing meant to live, breathe, and thrive have the greatest challenges to overcome.

 

The devil has marked you. It’s as if he’s saying, “Not that one.” Pointing to you, “There’s too much potential there to come against our agenda and harm us.” So he says to his demonic minions, “Stop that one there. Make sure he or she doesn’t grow and achieve their utmost for the highest of _____” and in that blank is a name that makes demons scream. Jesus. Yeshua. They know him as the dreaded Son of God. The King of Kings who has numbered their wicked days on this dark earth. Yes, the Blood of Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, causes their clawed toes to curl. So, therefore, can you.

 

You are God’s creation. You are HIS child. He’s gifted you to do serious damage against the dark of this world, against the dark that came over you. Coming out of seasons of darkness, or brutally dark spaces, when submitted to your Holy Maker, can enforce you with powerfully thick skin and a supple heart. A healed warrior who has overcome that much makes the mightiest warrior. A fighter who has come out of the most profound darkness can shine the brightest light.

 

When you realize this, that your walk on earth is a battle between good and evil; it’s spiritual warfare over your soul, and the fight for restoration and reinstatement of your good standing after having fallen or been pushed into a pit. So that your Godly giftedness is no longer just potential but a weapon that cannot be defeated. And his very presence, the Holy Spirit, dispels the darkness by the light he gives from within you.

 

By the enemy’s own suffocating darkness, we can come by wisdom. We can gain empathy for others in similar sad states of affairs. We can have and spread compassion. We’re not left without a clean path to take, to set our spiritual feet on. We’re not left without eternal promise. God’s Spirit is the beacon we carry with us no matter what the conditions. We might even help lighten all the darkness in this world. If you didn’t know him then, when you were a child, or when you were in an abusive situation, or when others had forsaken you, or when you were drowning in a dark and demonic place, know him now. You might be in an unbelievably dire situation at this present time. I challenge you to call out to him. Dada? You there? And he will begin to rescue you. He is the hope within the frailty of our hearts and minds.

 

Regarding you… regarding whatever darkness that troubles you, the deepest compassion of a loving God is your embrace. He held you in the dark when you didn’t know it. He holds you still. You are perfectly loved as you are. You are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). The devil has tried to silence you because you have something he fears. And he trembles at the thought of your testimony that he helped fuel! Use it. Use it against him. He’s your enemy. He’s all our enemy. Silence him. You, oh valued and beloved Child of God. You have the power and the authority to take hold of God’s comfort, accept his promise, and breathe words of light and life, from right where you are, right now.