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Revelation 3:20

Darkness comes for all of us. Prayers don’t necessarily protect us from it. Sometimes they hurl us straight into it head on. It can encroach gradually like a shadow is cast when something stands between us and the light. Other times it is startlingly unexpected, knocking the wind right out of us. It can be disorienting and terrifying. Unsettling, at least until our eyes adjust. Sometimes light refracts from somewhere, we can get our bearings a bit, and that is a welcomed grace. Other times, no matter how hard I strain, I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Be careful what you pray for, as the saying goes. Maybe the answer comes only after what feels like a long, cryptic scavenger hunt. If the answer comes at all.

I’m pretty sure this past year has taught me more about prayer by what has not been “answered,” according to my definition of answered, than by what has. Is there some formula to follow because I feel like I have been looking for just such a thing? Or is prayer a simple and childlike conversation with a Daddy? Done that too. Maybe if I add fasting, that should do it. Intercession, where “two or more are gathered in His name,” check.

I admit, my prayers are often selfish; laying out for God what I need to have happen in my life or for others whom I love the most. I sit across the table from from God laying out the map to my desired life and I tell Him what I need, what those I love need and how they are suffering. Surely He already knows how important these things are, heck, they are promises from His own word, so of course He wants to deliver on these requests. How else will we chart a course to my best life? Sometimes, often times, tears or even legit weeping validate the importance of my list of needs even more. I envision God collecting my tears in His bottle (Ps. 56:8) with one hand and moving mountains and clearing obstacles from my way with the other (Ps. 116:8). “God is good.”

I don’t know much, but some of what I do know is this: Loss infects every part of our life, at times creating a searing, untouchable, pain that radiates throughout our whole body. We only see what isn’t, what was taken, or what we fear will be. Or will never be.

Darkness waits by the door to see if I will question God’s goodness, His love for me, or maybe even His power to do anything at all to help me. Is He impotent or just indifferent? Darkness is always waiting by the door. (Genesis 4:7)

Satan’s message throughout the whole of human history is that God isn’t good. That God withholds from us, that He doesn’t fully love us or we would/wouldn’t … (fill in the blank). That is our enemy’s first and most powerful weapon, the one with which he struck the first blow, and the one he will keep bludgeoning us with until it turns on him when God says “Enough!” It gave birth to our first sin, and all of its offspring ever since. We doubt the inherent goodness of the One who gave us everything we will ever need in Himself, and trust is lost as we become discontent with, perhaps even feel betrayed by, what He gives (2 Peter 1:3). We want more, or at least other, than what He has given. Or didn’t give. So we take matters into our own hands. We doubt His Goodness, forget who He is, forget who we are, and fail to receive all things as a gift from His hand, especially when sometimes they come in some pretty unlovely packaging. Like those kids’ toys that you need a blow torch or chainsaw to open; so we just set the real thing down and play with the box instead.

What I do know for certain, though the rest is still a bit fuzzy yet, is that from creation to the Cross He “is God and there is no other.” He makes that abundantly clear umpteen times throughout all of scripture. Lungs that heave breath, a mind capable of thinking, a heart that beats without us having to ask are all God’s grace and subject to His command. Who am I, really, to receive only the “good” (aka, what I deem as such) from His hand and nothing else? With the brain I wouldn’t have except that He gave it to me, can I even begin to comprehend the ways and mysteries of an infinite God and reject what He has for me unless I deem it “good”? The serpent, disguised as my pride, says, “well sure you can.” Can I accept that there are things in this life, my life, that I simply cannot see from His bird’s eye view, knowing the beginning from the end (Isaiah 46:10), and that I don’t need to doubt what He is up to in it all? Can I trust that He loves me more than any earthly father ever could and that what He is giving me is intended not for my harm but for my good?

It comes for all of us, this darkness; crouching outside the door, keeping its crooked fingers crossed, whispering to itself, hissing really, “oh please, oh please, doubt His goodness, let me in.”

Sometimes the losses that leave holes in our lives, or wear us thin, actually become the “seeing-through to-God-places” that scatter light to every other dark place. If I don’t open that door, can I instead exchange confusion for trust, negativity for gratitude, fear for faith, deep hurt for even deeper joy, isolation for intimacy? Can I make the most of moments that I do have, count blessings, number them if I can count that high. Name them, and in doing so claim them as my own. Can I look intently, search for even the smallest of things to be grateful for … rescuing my disappointment and resurrecting my hope from the grip of death. If I could, I have a suspicion that it just might change some things. Maybe not my circumstances but perhaps how I see and respond to them.

Meanwhile, maybe there is another door, accessible only by faith, that darkness doesn’t know about. Maybe a more narrow, smaller one like the ones in the Wonderland Alice stumbled into or like a hidden entrance with a secret password or something. While the space inside could be big enough for everyone, maybe the door of our hearts, just the door, should be a little on the smaller side. It’s easier to not let in creepy things with crooked fingers that way.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.” We usually stop right there, content to have Jesus just come hang out with us, but there is more … “To him who overcomes,” – dare I say this might include when we refuse to open the door to the darkness that lurks just outside, hissing that God is not good … when we listen for His voice and let Him inside instead – “I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3:20-21) Sit with You on your throne, the place of authority and power, are you serious? I do have ears, Lord, the ones you gave me, let me hear. Help me use the eyes you also gave me to see my every prayer, even the weakest ones, as a door opening to your goodness. Sharpen the mind that you gave me to cut through lies and doubt to expose truth. Strengthen the hands that you gave me to open the door of the heart that you gave me, even if it’s been painted over or boarded up, so that you might enter in. Enable my feet to walk others to the door of their own heart that they might hear the gentle knock of your voice and let you into theirs as well. For goodness’ sake.