The Darkness of God
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
(T.S. Eliot, East Coker)
As a child, I was terrified of the dark.
Every night, my parents had a lovely ritual of singing to us and praying with us before bed. It was a time of deep comfort and peace in which I felt their love and God’s too.
But when they left and I was alone with the dark, everything changed.
The shadows on the wall became more than shadows; every strange sound caused adrenaline to shoot through my body as I broke out in a cold sweat. I’d pull the covers up tightly over my head—barely breathing—hoping that the blankets would be enough of a hiding place for whatever nameless dread would surely devour me in the dark jaws of nighttime terrors.
One night, I became especially convinced that there was a panther in my closet, just waiting to pounce on me. (To be fair, I was reading a book at the time about a sweet little prairie girl named Cady who gets stalked and treed by a panther). I remember running down the hall at night and begging my parents to check the closet for wildlife. Shockingly, no panther.
Looking back, I realize that my little girl self was convinced that the darkness was a place God was not. When the lights went out, God did too.
I wonder if this is why it was in the darkness of my bedroom that I first encountered God. During one such night of terror, I remember lying rigid with fright, staring up at the ceiling. Something deep within me prompted, “Ask Jesus into your heart”—and I did. The darkness was still present as a heavy blanket, but so was God.
As I grew up, I fell in love with things that made the darkness less…dark. The moon and stars became my friends. I even had a star-shaped nightlight that reminded me of their constant, beautiful shining.
But there came a time in my twenties—the first of many—in which I experienced a darkness that could not be banished with a simple nightlight or the thought of the stars. It was a spiritual darkness that lasted over a year, during which time I became utterly convinced that God no longer loved me. All I felt was God’s absence and a piercing, all-encompassing sadness which would later be diagnosed as depression. It was the terrifying experience of God’s absence that 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross named “The Dark Night of the Soul”—a spiritual condition of darkness in which we meet God by relinquishing everything we think we know.
Of the purpose of this darkness John of the Cross says:
God leads into the dark night those whom He desires to purify from…imperfections so that He may bring them farther onward.
(Book I, Ch. II)
In other words, God transforms His children in and through experiences of darkness for the purpose of deeper communion with Him.
During my first season of depression, I was drawn to St. John’s work simply because the title described exactly what I felt to be true: my soul was swallowed up in the darkness of midnight. But as I read past the title page and encountered his words, I began to wonder:
-What if the darkness and silence are not signs of God’s absence, but spaces for God’s presence?
-What if this darkness is not meant to punish me, but to deepen me?
* * *
In the Old Testament, God often reveals God’s self in darkness—in visions and dreams, in the night sky. Moses encounters God and is given the ten commandments not only “in a thick darkness” (Ex 20:21) but also beneath the darkness of a new moon (Ex 19:1). It as if God is saying, “Commune with me in absolute darkness.” Likewise, Jacob sees a ladder stretching to the night sky and wrestles with God till morning. Joseph dreams God’s vision for Israel’s future in the shape of the sun, moon, and stars.
For Abram, darkness is the condition in which God chooses to reveal his covenant plan for all of humanity. This story unfolds in Genesis 15, where God takes an elderly and childless Abram out into the night to show him the impossible:
Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…so shall your descendants be.
(Genesis 15:5)
Shortly after God showed Abram his vision for humanity in the stars of the night sky, we find another encounter with darkness:
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
(Genesis 15:12)
This verse describes two kinds of darkness: physical darkness and spiritual darkness. While God’s covenant with Abram was initiated under a night sky, God continues to seal his covenant by giving Abram a second encounter in which the darkness is total—the sun sets as Abram goes to sleep and “a deep and terrifying darkness” falls upon him. It is in this unsettling darkness that God reveals his promise to rescue the future nation of Israel from the dark night of slavery and exile (Gen 15:13-16).
This is a darkness that requires faith—a different kind of sight altogether. This is The Dark Night of the Soul which many have faced but few have named. As the apostle Paul reminds us, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).
Later that night, as a final sign of God’s covenant, Abram sees a flaming torch move among the animal pieces of the sacrifice he made earlier that day (Gen 15:17). An unexpected light shone in the mysterious darkness—and that light, too, was God.
In Isaiah, God promises that the darkness of Israel’s future exile is precisely where His presence and rescue will shine the brightest:
I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
(Isaiah 45:3)
Could this be true for us, too?
The darkness can be deep and terrifying, yes. But it can also be a place of intimate revelation—of dreams and visions—of learning to walk with God by faith.
If you find yourself in a season of darkness I invite you to consider this:
What if this darkness contains everything I need to see by a different light—to be made new?