In her book, Awaken1, Priscilla Shirer tells the story of a time when she was flying between London and Johannesburg and settling herself down for a good night’s sleep.
Then suddenly the plane increasing its altitude burst through the clouds and bathed the plane in sunlight. Somewhat confusing when it was almost 4am in London at the time.
In that moment, God brought to her mind some verses in Psalm 139:
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
There are times in our lives that are dark and it’s hard to see the light.
I recall a dark time in my life when I felt totally isolated and was staying in a university dorm. At times like this, you hesitate to turn the lights off at the end of the day – or at least I did – because then it’s just you in the darkness and the thoughts that are racing through your head.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Eventually I turned the lights off and discovered that it wasn’t just me. This is because I also discovered that the walls and the ceiling were absolutely covered with glow-in-the-dark stickers.
I wasn’t completely in the dark. There were lights all around.
I just couldn’t see them until it was dark.
Darkness comes into our lives for a range of reasons. Sometimes it’s because we have erred, gone astray and refused to heed biblical wisdom.
Other times darkness comes into our lives because we’ve been obedient to God but are surrounded by others who have no wish to be obedient. Sometimes darkness is inflicted upon us by those who despise our obedience.
This can drive us mad; both in the emotional sense and the mental health sense. Satan has no issues with us losing our minds. Unsurprisingly, he’s all for it.
But God is not.
Persecution for our faith is sadly all part of Christian living. Yet, in my experience, when my grip on sanity starts to loosen as a result, I’ve found these are the times when God starts talking the loudest and shining the brightest.
He loves his children more than we realise.
And he loves them because all his children are ‘in Christ’ – a supernatural mystery which we will only really understand when we are in heaven.
Yet we know that God loves his Son, Jesus Christ.
When we walk through the darkness we may feel as though God does not care. He is oblivious to our pain. And, as I often do, we may feel as though God doesn’t love us.
Yet we know that this cannot be true for those who are in Christ. It is an illogical suggestion.
The Father loves the Son. Believers are in the Son. The Father cannot not love them, even if he tried. And he wouldn’t try.
So the next time you’re walking in darkness for your faith, don’t forget to look for the lights. You might not see them until it gets totally dark. But when it does you’ll wonder why you never noticed them before.
Because trust me, they’re even brighter than you’d imagine.
Yours with a pack of stickers,
Alison
- Awaken: 90 Days with the God who Speaks by Priscilla Shirer. B&H Publishing group, 2017. ↩︎
