Though the Darkness Hide Thee
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
As we were getting ready for church a few months ago, I heard my husband call from down the hall, “I found my jacket!” I came around the corner with a bemused expression on my face. “Are you trying not to laugh at me because I keep losing this jacket?” He asked with a grin.
It’s true, he does lose this jacket more often than even I, loser of things, can understand. But I was not laughing at him. In fact, I wasn’t really laughing at all. I was half mulling and half talking to God. Again? Why do you immediately answer these kinds of prayers but not the ones I really really need you to answer?
It is an astonishing reality in our home that whenever there are lost keys, wallets, or jackets and I pray for God to show us where they are, boom, they appear or we suddenly remember where we left them. I don’t know what to tell you. I have no explanation. It’s just a thing that happens. I am certain that it can’t be one hundred percent of the time but, when pressed, none of us can remember a time when it didn’t “work.” And up to that moment with the black rain jacket, it made me happy. It felt like this tiny supernatural care and kindness that God was providing for our family.
But my heart was hurting that morning. I was overwhelmed with a hard situation we were facing. A situation that required a lot of thinking and brainstorming and figuring and talking, trying to see a way through. More than that, we had been praying about this situation, pleading with God to heal and make it whole for a very long time.
When Vern asked me if I had seen his sneaky black jacket I called out from the bedroom that I hadn’t but also, out of habit, whispered, “Lord please show him where that jacket is.” Under a minute. It was found in under a minute. Instead of delight, my hurting heart felt slightly mocked. Who cares about a dumb jacket that seems intent on getting itself lost? I just want my life put back together again.
We got into the car and as we were making the rainy drive to church, I admitted to Vern how I was feeling about the prayer phenomenon and about how many little answered prayers I exchange for something shift a few degrees in the big requests. It was an open and honest conversation where neither of us could rally or tell the other one to “look on the bright side.” The sky felt unfairly dark for a late spring morning as we drove the rest of the way in silence except for the hard slow breathing that heartache can induce.
Initially, I don’t think either of us were tempted to not go to church but when the first song of the worship team came in with joyful singing and a strong drumbeat, I wanted to bolt. Absolutely not, I thought. I cannot honestly sing this song right now. But instead of making my escape, I stood amidst the crowd of worshippers and started to send up panicky prayers. Lord, let me see You. Let me be able to worship You. Help me to trust You. This is hard. This is confusing. Where are you in this?
The first song ended and suddenly the slow strains of a familiar hymn began to play. Holy Holy Holy. Slow and steady. Ancient and calming. I was able to quietly sing the first verse:
Holy, holy, holy!
Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning
Our song shall rise to Thee
Holy, holy, holy!
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons
Blessed Trinity!
I felt more settled after the opening stanza. But when the words of the second verse appeared on the screen, I am certain that His Spirit was working in me and I felt an answer to my questions. Not an answer, really, and not something that is easy to put into words:
Holy, holy, holy!
Though the darkness hide Thee
Though the eye of sinful man
Thy glory may not see
Only Thou art holy
There is none beside Thee
Perfect in power, in love and purity
“Though the darkness hide Thee. Though the eye of sinful man, Thy glory may not see.” Again, these words were far from giving me a tangible explanation for how, why, and when prayer “worked”. But the tears rolling down my cheek informed me that something was shifting in the deep places within me.
I had a strong and deep sense that all was not lost. That His good and powerful presence, along with His light, was being temporarily hidden. I have no answer for you. No general teaching that can guarantee a way out of your particular struggle. Just a compulsion to write and share. The emotions connected to this faith are fluid. But it is a faith that is bigger and more terrifyingly beautiful than what we can contain with words. Sometimes my vision of the Holy One seems clear and bold and palpable but other times it is blurred and dark, causing me to wonder if I had remembered the glory times accurately. Did they really happen?
But what I can tell you is this. Every time I circle back around to the bright experiences of seeing His goodness, it carves something deeper into me so that when the cloud comes to hide Him from view, it gets easier to speak truth to myself. It’s ok. It’s just the darkness of this world hiding Him from view for the moment. It won’t last.
I was driving home with my daughter a few nights ago. There were big billowy clouds in the summer sky but around one particularly ominous cloud bright light was gilding its edges. A full moon was gleaming round and bold behind the cloud. It made me catch my breath and think of this article that I was struggling to articulate. As we drove and talked we kept checking back to the determined light that was growing. Finally, we turned a corner and there it was, the moon had made itself fully visible.
We were reminded of Samwise Gamgee telling Frodo, in The Return of the King, to not despair: “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”
Have I made sense of the manner in which the prayers are answered for our family? Yes and no. On one level, I don’t think prayer will ever truly make sense to me on this side of the river. And yet, there seems to be a ratio perspective to consider. Maybe the little prayers with low stakes that really aren’t meant to transform us in big ways tend to be answered more quickly than the deep, heart changing, life altering requests we are pleading for. Changing hearts and minds is no small event and, therefore, the process is also not a quick day surgery type of procedure.
At the end of all my musings I tend to have more things to wonder and consider than less. More questions than answers. But the peace that has been growing since that morning at church is that the light is there. Our God is there.
