It takes only a few words to cast you into a downward spiral of despair and darkness. “There’s been an accident.” “The medical tests confirmed our suspicions.” “It’s just not working. I want out.” “Mom, you need to know ...” Nothing makes sense. Any sense of reason is an irrational hodgepodge. Lives are changed and twisted – forever. You grope in the darkness, desperate for a sense of God. God seemed so predictable when life was going well. Fears taunt, and the questions race in a maddening frenzy. From somewhere deeper than the imagination can comprehend, comes the whisper of a far distant hope. Your consuming grief hesitates, and the whisper comes again, while your heart dares to listen, and clutches its seeming mirage in the clamoring darkness. What is happening?
C.S. Lewis writes with tremendous imaginative insight concerning the advice of Screwtape, an experienced devil, to his aspiring apprentice, Wormwood. Screwtape cautions Wormwood about believers who cannot feel God, and still they choose to respond to Him. I recognized from their interaction that the deepest essence of faith comes when all sense of God vanishes, and we choose to believe in the midst of the empty silence. The psalmist heard the whisper of a far distant hope, and he knew the whisper came from God. He cries out with honesty and a sense of absolute dependence, “Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens. Don’t turn away from me, or I will die. Let me hear of your unfailing love to me in the morning, for I am trusting you.” The psalmist has little awareness of God, but he pleads that God would reveal Himself more fully. He recognizes that there is nothing else to hold onto, nothing else that can lift him from his despair, and he comes to God with a spoken expectancy. Even in the darkness, he chooses to believe. He chooses to believe in the living God who gives His eternal presence. He chooses to believe in His faithful and righteous ways.
Precious daughter of God, there are those times in our lives that make no sense, and the questions go unanswered. The darkness descends, and the silence is deafening. The swift currents of circumstance tear us from warm and familiar security, and rush us toward an uncertain tomorrow. Choose to believe in the darkness, and trust His Father-heart. It is the deepest essence of faith.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: Psalm 143)
