Entering the Darkness
This quote by Thomas Merton is very profound in my thinking at this time of my life: “Our Christian hope is the purest of all lights that shine in the darkness, but it shines in darkness, and one must enter into darkness to see it shining. " How often do we go into the darkness to bring the light and our Christian hope? How often do I? These words are very convicting.
It’s so easy to sit in the church and to wait for people to come, to stand at the doors and open them for people who wander in on Sunday mornings and wish them a good morning, and to spend evenings in church meetings. All good things. Yet, is that entering into the darkness? Where is the darkness?
It is within all of us. It seems that all people go through a time of darkness. A time of dryness. A time of searching. A spiritual crisis. It’s often short lived; but, as with Mother Teresa, it can last for years. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite, wrote of her own experience. Centering on doubts about the afterlife, she reportedly told her fellow nuns, "If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into.”
This is why it is important to be in a Christian community, to not only commune with nature, but to commune with others. They have that light of hope that can help us overcome our dark times.
There once was a youth director I knew who, instead of asking “how are you”, he would ask “how is your soul”. If the soul is the only thing that remains at the end of days, it is important that we care for our soul, and we work to keep that light of hope alive in ourselves and others.
John 1: 5 says - “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it." Shine your light of hope; and, when it dims, when there is doubt, when you feel darkness creeping in, let someone know. Let them listen to your soul and encourage you. Often we try to hide it as a sign of weakness. It is a sign of being human, of being in this world together, and a sign of needing each other.
So, how is it with your soul?
