Sitting in the Dark

But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a boat, in the fog, in the dark.

Wendell Berry

Sitting in the Dark

When I was a child, life was good and simple. I was born in Urbana, near the University of Illinois, to pastor parents. Living in a university town had its perks. Its diverse ethnic culture was married with rural values. College football reigned supreme (Go, Illini, Go!), and the circus stopped by each spring. It was pretty much an idyllic setting. We Foth kids were surrounded by love and good friends and sweet corn. If we were lucky, we got to share the chocolate bars Mom stashed in her purse, and Dad would wrestle with us when he got home from the church at night.

We played hard every day, mostly outside. There wasn't much to be afraid of. Even when the bully down the street tried to take our bikes, we knew Dad would get them back. Our days fell into a rhythm of church on Sundays and school on weekdays. My siblings and I attended Yankee Ridge Elementary about three blocks from our house. We walked there every day and came home to a hot lunch served by Mom. Our teachers were kind, and our classmates were the kids that lived down the street from us. It was just the way life was.

We loved Yankee Ridge. I especially loved my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Miles, with the wavy blonde hair and shiny shoes. I tried very hard to learn my numbers and listen in class. Those who did were rewarded with one of her kind smiles. As Yankee Ridge students, we got to participate in special activities, like macramé and gymnastics. Every so often, different graduate students from the U of I would come to our elementary school and conduct studies for their doctoral programs. They used us as guinea pigs to prove or disprove their theses. We didn't mind because it got us out of class. One day when I was in kindergarten, I was sent home with a note pinned to my shirt. Teachers didn't do e-mail or texts in the olden days. They safety-pinned important messages to our turtlenecks. I was invited to be a part of a study researching if children were afraid of the dark.

My dad was sitting at the dining room table when he read the note. He asked me, "Are you afraid of the dark?" And I said, "No." Because I was out of preschool, for goodness sake. Of course I wasn't afraid of the dark. I was pretty fearless in my younger years. I knew nothing of the horrors of junior high that awaited me. My dad said, "Do you want to be in the study group to see if you are afraid of the dark?" "Sure." Only babies were scared of the dark. My dad signed the note, I took it back to my teacher, and I was in.

The next day, I was ushered into a small room with a child-sized table and chairs. There were no windows in the room. I was seated at the table, and the grad student told me, "I am going to turn out the light and go outside of the room and shut the door. I want you to see how long you can sit in the dark by yourself." He pointed to the light switch on the wall. "If you get scared, you can turn on the light any time you want. But why don't you try to see how long you can sit in the dark without turning on the light?" I said, "OK." He proceeded to flip off the light and walk out the door, shutting it behind him. It was pitch black. I could no longer see the white-and-gray-flecked linoleum beneath my feet. I took a deep breath, and I sat in the dark. By myself. For all of three seconds. And then I got up and turned the light back on.

The grad student must have been able to tell that the light was back on because he immediately opened the door and came back in the room. He had a perplexed look on his face. "You turned on the light." I nodded. "I thought you said that you weren't afraid of the dark." "I'm not," I answered, confidently. "Then why did you turn the light back on?" Now I was the one looking perplexed. I looked at him and said, "Because I wanted to." Apparently, this guy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He should have known. Given the choice, no one likes to sit in the dark. Especially by themselves. It doesn't take a research paper to figure that out.

Faith in the Dark

You may be wondering what sitting in the dark has to do with hope. All of our greatest hopes spring from our deep well of faith, a belief that the God of the Universe loves us and has a good plan for us. Without faith in a loving and caring God, there is no hope. The problem is that having faith can feel a whole lot like being a kindergartener sitting in the dark. Trusting God with our lives does not come easily. It is hard. And it goes against human nature to do hard things. The dark isn't really our thing. We are lights-on kind of people.

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Faith: Belief. Confidence. Conviction.

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But the God of the Universe, the One who created us from dust and breathed life into every living creature, is inviting us on a lights-out adventure. An adventure in the dark that He has designed specifically with us in mind. He is asking us to jump feet first into a story we don't know the ending to. It says in Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see" (NIV).

So if we are seeing it, we can be pretty sure that faith is not involved. The Apostle Paul follows up these thoughts in Hebrews 11:6, reminding us, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him" (NIV).

We desperately want to live a life that is pleasing to Him. We were created for a life of pleasing Him. The internal shift is that most of us came to faith out a life of pleasing ourselves. Before we know Jesus, our bodies, minds, souls, and spirits are completely focused on our own selfish desires. We called all the shots. We didn't care about God or His plans. We only cared about ourselves and our plans. What we didn't know is that the self-pleasing life we were living was leading us down a self-destructive path toward death. Self-centered living always has the same outcome. Before Jesus, we destroyed ourselves with our coveting and hatred and lust. Before Jesus, we drowned ourselves in anger and bitterness. Before Jesus, we were lost in a different kind of darkness — the kind that left us paralyzed in fear and alone with our pain. We were dying moment by moment. We needed saving from the dark. From ourselves.

And that is why Jesus intervened on our behalf. He died so that we could be free from ourselves. He shattered the gates of hell with His powerful love. He showed up with His all-encompassing forgiveness and a new way of living. He brought His healing touch and His truth to our broken...