*This past December we did something at my church I’ve never done before as a pastor. We hosted what’s called a “Longest Night” worship service on December 21st. While Christmas is normally considered a season of joy, most of us know that not everybody runs toward the holidays screaming with glee. For many people, Christmas is a season where loss, grief, confusion, depression, loneliness, and more “dark feelings” take center stage. The holidays can exasperate such feelings because it when it seems like “everybody is happy” (which of course is never true), “dark feelings” are felt in starker relief. Longest Night worship services are held on December 21st because that’s the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. It’s a night where darkness takes center stage, and we have permission to engage the dark.
In the Bible, at first glance, darkness can seem like an enemy to God or the antithesis of God’s presence in creation. 1 John 1:5-6 says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.” The Gospel of John says, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus). In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus is called the “light” of the world. In our baptisms we are called to shine our “light” before others, not expose our darkness. All over the bible, darkness symbolizes confusion, sin, evil, hate, and even death. Not fun.
But if you dig deeper, you’ll find God’s relationship with darkness is not so simple. “In the beginning” as Genesis tells us, all of creation was birthed from darkness. Darkness is the womb from which everything is born, it is the primal spring of God’s great creative nature. In darkness, Jacob wrestles an angel only to discover later he’d been wrestling with God himself. In that same darkness, God blesses Jacob and renames names Him Israel, meaning, “One who struggles with God and overcomes.” The two great saving acts of God are engulfed in darkness. In the first, the Exodus, God calls His people out of slavery in Egypt under the cover of night. In the second, God remakes Jesus’ body in the darkness of the tomb, giving the world Resurrection. Darkness, far from being the enemy of God, is the liminal space from which God performs his greatest acts of grace.
We would therefore be silly to avoid encounters with our own darkness. Darkness must be peered into, it must be engaged, it must be walked in, it must be walked walked through, our hands must grope in the dark, feeling around because according to scripture God is THERE doing creative things and eventually we’re going to grab hold of him, or better yet, he’s going to grab hold of us. And so it’s important we cultivate spiritual practices that help us grope in the dark and become familiar with grief, loneliness, loss, confusion, and the sins that plague us. God is active in those dark places birthing something new, we’d best go see what he’s up to.
So if you don’t feel like walking in the light during the holidays, don’t. Walk in darkness, for God is there too. If you don’t have light to shine during the holidays, don’t. Strive to become familiar with the dark, for God performs his greatest acts of grace in the dark.
*I leaned heavily on learning from a book entitled “Learning to Walk in the Dark” by Barbara Brown Taylor for this article. Copies can be found online.
