Dark Nights

Serpentine sorrows weave their way through my thoughts tonight. It has been one of those days where things go well, but one person after another lets a little bit of ache show through. I see the hurt, yet the trying to be vulnerable so the heart won't harden. I see broken bodies and broken hearts. Sick bodies and sick souls. I see carnage and horror in the streets of Paris. The pain piles high; the daily struggles of how to move forward after the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the death of a dream. 

These are not my sorrows, they live in the lungs and limbs and sore hearts of others. But those 'others' are my people. My friends, my family...My neighbours across the globe. What do we do when the Fall is crushing us? Not in one splat, but slowly pressing down on us, like a heavy stone, like the steadily rising tide, like oppressive darkness... Then what?

Under the pressure of the Fall, I am reminded of the relief of the Incarnation. Sometimes I have wondered why God created mankind if He knew that sin and death would enter the good world He had made. That is because I am inside the story, too close to the events to understand the Author's intent in each minute portion of the story.

 O me! for why is all around us here

  As if some lesser god had made the world,

  But had not force to shape it as he would,

  Till the High God behold it from beyond,

  And enter it, and make it beautiful?

  Or else as if the world were wholly fair,

  But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,

  And have not power to see it as it is:

  Perchance, because we see not to the close;—¹

As Tennyson points out, we do not know the close—but God Himself sees the end from the beginning. He knew Eve would succumb to temptation and that Adam would fail to stop her. God knew the price He Himself would have to pay to right the world from the chaos of the Fall. He knew that He would love us and we would spit in His face. That He would forgive us, and we would run into the arms of other gods again and again. He knew He would be vulnerable with us and that we would use His own love and mercy against Him. He knew these things, too, when He created mankind—and He went ahead and made us and loved us and died for us anyway.

The Curse may crush, sin may seek to squeeze the Life out of us, darkness may seem like it is draining the Light out of the world... But the Curse, the darkness, does not know the ending. Life will win. Light will oust darkness forever.

So when the perishable is lost in the imperishable, the mortal lost in the immortal, this saying will come true: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ ‘O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’ It is sin which gives death its power, and it is the Law which gives sin its strength. All thanks to God, then, who gives us the victory over these things through our Lord Jesus Christ!²

Somehow, God makes the ending better than the beginning, even when dissonance is introduced in His symphony. He weaves it into His strong melody and brings resolution and redemption.

Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!


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1. Lord Tennyson, Alfred "The Passing of King Arthur" Idylls of the King (Public Domain)

2. I Corinthians 15.54-57 (PHILLIPS)

Darkness Comes to Cudgel My Brain

The leaves of the oak tree glisten with rain

As Darkness comes to cudgel my brain

Tonight with fingers, clenched fists—

Probing, pummelling, heaping on shame,

Thick as ghost-fog and obscuring mists.

Birch boles are black in the shade,

Their creamy skin can only fade

Away, shrink away, hide from eyes

Ever-watching since the day they were made,

Swaying into the snare of the lies...

...Lies that enter the heart, rotting the core

Of the trees-turned-dark; of me, a whore

Inside—my mind, my heart—broken,

Fallen in love with myself, wanting more,

Always insatiable for a counterfeit token

Of love—which is only lust thinly masked,

Glossy outside, alluring as red wine, long-casked

And flowing free—with no thought of tomorrow

When the head-shattering pain remains, unasked,

And Darkness leaves in its wake only false sorrow

Which we call guilt, that cannot cover up lust

Any more than gilt leaf can make a bust

Pure gold all the way through, or trying hard

Can make us new; we can only rust

Under sin's corrosion, once innocent, now marred.

Tomorrow arrives, is today; and the heart-shattering 

Pain of disfiguring corruption is scattering

All faculties of feeling, of sorrow, of true shame

And the eruption of sin, full-fledged, isn't flattering—

I am excoriated, a shell, with only myself to blame.

Night drones on within, filling the hollow

With nought but shadows. Here I wallow

In self-pity and despair, I cannot heal

Myself, save myself—this is hard to swallow,

And know with my life, as I no longer feel

Alive, feel at all, or know repentance-giving-grief.

Inside, the Darkness flutters, kicks, seeks relief

In a wail, a cry for life-breath, for the burning

Spirit of Holiness to come as the thief

Who steals my heart, plunders me back, returning

Me to the rightful King of the world wide—

Eyes wide, as feeling returns with the Spirit inside

Of my fragile heart-shards—redemption is here.

Apathy drains out, life surges in to veins long denied

Its crimson tide by the strangling fingers of fear...

Of being found out, found wanting—ludicrous pride

Kept me locked in the gnawing, growing dark

That threatened to keep me trapped like a lark,

Caged. Enraged at my own selfish choices,

But powerless to save myself—the truth, stark—

I begged for mercy, "Yours." A Voice says...

My face is in His hands, turned toward His eyes,

I see them glistening with tears at my cries

For help, desperate though they were,

I couldn't get out of the dirt, I surmise,

Because I was so focussed on me, so sure

That I could do something to save my soul,

Yet always giving up or in, a wobbly foal

Unable to even stand on the legs given me

Without the Spirit's breath standing me whole

And upright—from Darkness I am made free...

"The Light, the Light!" I cry, covering my face,

Feeling crushed by glory's weight in the space

Of my small frame. The holy, searing Light

Is what I need for healing, soundness—both grace—

To fix what I cannot, to cure me from sin's bite.

From "The End" to "Once Upon a Time..."

Advent: Week 2

Toward the end of each year I become eager for the next. Perhaps the new year's freshness wafts into my soul, breathing life inside. Maybe I think the current year has been quite long enough—I am ready for new dreams, people, and places. Deeper than than that, though, is the reality that the new church year has already begun. Advent is the new beginning amidst the end. The steps of the Great Dance have come full circle, to be made new in this familiar theme.

For me, Advent, Christmas, and New Year's are the season of both looking back and peering to see ahead. Hindsight is not always as clear as people say it is. Upon reviewing this year, I see a lot of messy, painful life situations for my friends, family, and myself. These things do not wrap up neatly at the end of the year. There is still much question-asking and inability to see God's plan unfolding. In some cases all I can see are the tossing heads of hoary waves, no land in sight. How can anyone survive the turbulence, the repeated buffets, of such conditions with no respite in view? Only by Hope. Hope is the anchor for our souls, to keep us from drifting out to sea and being lost among the crashing, crushing waves. 

Hope. Anchor. Abandonment. Ashes. Fearlessness. Bitterness. Forgiveness. These words have twisted into a thick cord, the thread woven through the tapestry of this year. They have haunted the rising and falling melody of the Great Dance with their dissonance, assonance, and resonance. What words will step into their places this new year? What themes will emerge in the music always over our lives, in the weaving of God's seen-story? 

I do not have answers yet. The above words have been whirling through my thoughts, writing, and reading so much that I had to again spill them upon the page. With these words I go from "The End" toward the unknown "Once upon a time." This next story may be full of ogres, sorrow, and sore loss—but it may be filled with valiant warriors for what is right, with wisdom sought and found. I suspect that it, too, will end with Hope.  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 

~ Saint John  1:1-5 (ESVUK)