No Darkness At All

Daylight is peace, night a battle. As the sun dips low in the sky, hiding its face from the pain, I gird myself for a siege. Not a physical siege—rather something much deeper, darker, and more dangerous to my soul. At night, I wage war with the darkness in my mind.

You might never see it. Follow me through my post-dinner activities and you’d find nothing alarming. I sit in a comfortable recliner in my library with my husband or my son for most of the evening. Surrounded by books, those companions who only speak when you ask them, I stare at a computer screen until around seven o’clock, when my son announces one of his favorite times of day—snack time. Then we read or practice Japanese until bedtime, and well before nine o’clock we are in bed and asleep. Watching me, you would say my experience is calm, peaceful even.

Inside, however, a battle is raging between hope and despair, between light and darkness, a microcosm of the struggle that surrounds us all, tearing us apart. Thieves carry off treasures, and hopelessness robs my heart; an adulteress abandons her husband, and my faith betrays me; murderers plunge the dagger, and my brain seeks to take my life. I wait, anguished, for the dawn. Where will my help come from?

I don’t know anyone who can create enough light to fight the darkness. Some of us think we can. Even I turn on as many lights in my house as possible when twilight approaches. Maybe something about the lamplight makes me feel I can keep the dark out. Yet no matter how high the wattage of my bulbs, no matter the four bright lamps flooding my library with brightness, no matter if I turn on every light in the house (setting my son on an environmentally conscious rampage to turn them all off again), the darkness still filters in. I cannot hide from it. I don’t know anyone who can.

Anyone except One. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5, ESV). That’s the problem, then—I cannot escape the darkness because, unlike with God, it is inside me. As I try to shut it out, barricading myself against the siege of gloom, I seal some of it inside at the same time. When I choose to combat my depression by throwing up walls, I am trapping the despair that is already within me. My sin—my mistrust of God, my self-reliance, my pride—then grasps at that despair to magnify it, to grow it. My heart is sick, desperately sick; who can understand it?

What hope do I have? If I cannot keep the darkness out without caging some of it inside me, how can I be cured? Who can heal my heart? Who can bring light to the darkness? “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV). There is hope. There is a brightness inside me that is contending with the darkness. It is shining out of the darkness.

“But to you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings…” (Malachi 4:2, ESV) The sun, that is, the Son, is risen. He is risen indeed. The dawn is coming, the dawn is near.

One day, “… night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light…” (Revelation 22:5, ESV). Isaiah promises, “The LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory” (Isaiah 60:19, ESV). Light is coming, light is near.

As I write this, Christmas approaches, and I am reminded of a song:

Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love’s pure light, Radiant beams from thy holy face With the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord, at thy birth! Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!

Perhaps Light is banishing the darkness even as I type. Perhaps my world will soon turn to Day.