Day 33 of Lent: Finding God in the Darkness

Where can I go from your spirit? Psalm 139: 7

God's holy adventure embraces darkness as well as light.  Personal healing and wholeness must include both prevention and response to health challenges if it is truly to respond to the well-being of the whole person.  Darkness has a light of its own.  Within the darkness, the seedling grows.  Within the womb, new life takes form.  Within the chrysalis, the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly.  We often fear the dark and flee from the unfix-able aspects of life that will eventually be our companions on this adventure of life.

The theologian Howard Thurman reminds us that when we attend to the divine light within our own lives and the world, we can find our way through the deepest darkness.  Psalm 139 describes the reality that if God is truly with us wherever we go, we are always at home even when we don't know it.  Despite our apparent distance from God, God never leaves us.

"If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me becomes night, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you." (v. 11)

Anxiety, depression, and fear may dim our experience of God, but even when our struggles threaten us, a divine light can still illumine our path.  This light may come through the love of a listening friend, the help of a sensitive therapist, the support of a faithful community, or the intervention of one who may care.

Affirm for yourself:
Wherever I go, I am in God's hand.
Regardless of how I feel, God supports me.
Regardless of my thoughts and actions, God works to heal and guide me.
I am always at home, because God is always with me.

Prayer:
In darkness, O God, we experience your light shining upon us.  Help me embrace light and dark, action and rest, birth and death.  Help me accept my shadow side as a womb of possibility rather than shame.  Help me take my whole life to you--joy and sorrow, friendship and anger, intimacy and alienation--knowing that you bless and heal all things by your love.  Amen.