The
Light Shines Brightest in the Darkness
October
31, 2020
Today I read this
opening verse of Psalm 63:
O God, you are my God, I seek
you,
my soul
thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and
weary land where
there is no
water. NRSV.
As I read those lines I asked
myself: Do you? Do you seek God? Do you thirst for God as a person dying of
thirst seeks water in an arid place? I thought, I have to be honest here. Most
of the time the answer is no. Sure, I’ve been reading a lot of the Bible in
these months or isolation because of the pandemic. I’ve written over 350 pages
of blog posts during that time, most of them on Christian subjects. In prior
years I wrote a book of theology and a book on the Bible. Well, two books on
the Bible actually, for I wrote one, then revised it and reissued it. I don’t
preach much anymore, but frankly I pray less except when watching my church’s
taped worship service on Sunday morning. Despite my status as an ordained
minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and my experience as a pastor and
Christian author, most of the time I get along reasonable well paying precious
little attention to God and doing very little longing for God. So no, I
thought, most of the time what the psalmist of Psalm 63, said to be David but
who knows, said about himself isn’t much true of me. But then I remembered the
one time in my life when I did seek God, when I longed for God to come to help
me. I've written much of what follows here before, but I’m going to write about
it again for my own sake if not for anyone else’s.
Late in the
evening of Wednesday, July 31, 2002, my wife Francie Sorenson, nee Lorance,
died of metastatic breast cancer. We’d been together for over thirty years and
had been married for the great bulk of that time. She was the first love of my
life. She was the mother of our two children. We’d been through a lot together,
but I needn’t go into all that here. We loved each other. We were deeply
committed to each other. I stayed with her through her final illness. In those
times of pain and grief I had a couple of experiences of God that got me
through. This is what they were.
Shortly after we
learned that Francie’s cancer would take her life I attended a worship service
in which one of the hymns was “Won’t You Let Me Be Your Servant.” When I got
home I typed up some of the verses of that hymn and gave them to Francie as my
pledge to her for the difficult days ahead. They included these two verses:
I will hold the
Christ-light for you
in the shadow of
your fear.
I will hold my
hand out to you,
speak the peace
you long to hear.
I will weep when
you are weeping,
when you laugh
I’ll laugh with you.
I will share your
joy and sorrow
till we’ve seen
this journey through.[1]
I still tear up when I hear those
verses or for that matter when I write them as I did just now for the first
time since that day nearly twenty years ago when I gave them to Francie. The
phrases in those verses that most touch me are “I will hold the Christ-light
for you” and “till we’ve seen this journey through.” We saw it through until
she died. I tried through it all to hold the Christ-light for her. The
grounding in God that I took from those verses got me through. I like to think
that maybe those verses helped Francie get through it all too.
She died. We knew
she would. We knew her death was coming, though it came sooner than we’d hoped.
I thought I was ready. I wasn’t. I don’t know that it would be possible for
anyone truly to be ready for such a loss. I fell apart. I felt a grief and a
psychic pain I’d had no idea I was capable of feeling. It simply was more than
I could bear. Three days after Francie’s death, on the morning of Saturday,
August 3, 2002, I was in the shower weeping uncontrollably. I began to sink to
my knees. I just couldn’t hold myself up against all the pain was overwhelming me. As I dropped to my knees,
without thinking about it at all, I said “Lord, lift me up.” Immediately, with
my having absolutely no perception of any time passing, I felt myself
physically lifted up and put back on my feet. I didn’t lift myself up. I couldn’t
have. On my own all I could have done was kneel on the floor of that shower
weeping. I’d probably have been there at least until the hot water ran out.
Maybe the water turning cold would have gotten me up out of there. I don’t
know. I do know that a force from beyond myself was with me in my grief. A
force that I can only identify as God responded to my sobbing prayer and lifted
me back on my feet. In the darkest moment of my life I turned to God, and God
answered me. I can explain what happened no other way. When I was in the
darkest depths of despair God was with me. God answered me. For all of the
months in which I could hardly get by from day to day because of my grief God
got me through.
I write these
words three days before the 2020 presidential election. Former Vice President
Joe Biden is the Democrats’ nominee. Years ago, just after he had first been
elected to the Senate from his home state of Delaware, Biden suffered a loss
that makes my loss of Francie seem paltry by comparison. Biden’s wife and very
young daughter were killed in a car crash. His two young sons were badly
injured. Today I saw a Biden campaign ad featuring his second, current wife,
Dr. Jill Biden. She said that she first met Joe a couple of years after he lost
his wife and daughter in that terrible car accident. She told of how she had
asked him how he ever made it through. She said that he had told her that “the
light shines brightest in the darkness.” He meant, I’m sure, that it was his
Christian faith (in his case Catholic Christian faith) that got him through. I
hear him saying that the Christ-light of which “Won’t You Let Me Be Your
Servant” sings shone for him in that time of unimaginable loss and what must
have been nearly unbearable grief. I don’t know, but I assume that he turned to
God often in that terrible time of his life. What I heard Jill Biden say today
tells me that he knew that God was with in his grief and got him through.
I don’t know why
it works this way. I just know that it does. The Christ-light shines brightest in
the darkness. Just as God gave the people water at Meribah, so when our souls
are parched and dying of thirst God gives us the living water of Jesus Christ.
God is there to lift us up, put us back on our feet, and get us through. On the
cross Jesus cried “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” In that
despairing cry of dereliction we know, paradoxical though it be, that God never
abandons us in our hours of greatest need. If we live long enough we all have
times of deep darkness as we go through life. If in these times we turn to God
though we feel nothing but despair God will get us through. The light shines
brightest in the darkness. Thanks be to God!
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