When the Darkness of Suffering Seems to Thick to Cross
The sun may slant golden beams across our floor, but in the midst of suffering, all feels like night to us. We wander around as those caught in a fog, stumbling through an unrelenting darkness. We want the light, we want to trust that the light will return, but it feels as if it will never brighten our faces again. Our hearts feel heavy, our head is muddled, and aches and pain we can’t explain keep pestering us. This is suffering.
Being in a fallen world, none of us are immune to it. I’ve staggered through miscarriages, mental illnesses, and an abusive father. Some days, I wondered how I’d ever make it through the musty tunnel and see the light of goodness again.
In the midst of it all, these three lampposts have lit my way, and through them my Saviour carried me through each of those heartaches.
Express Your Pain to God
When preterm labour put my husband and I in another city under the care of a different hospital, we attended a church that only sang the Psalms. As we opened our psalters to a Psalm of lament and sang it together as a congregation, that one worship time gave more courage to my heart than any youth rally with its flashing lights and fully-equipped band.
Whether I like it or not, I have a more melancholy heart. I’m not much different from my toddler and his big emotions. At one point in my faith, I believed I had to fold and stuff these emotions into a deeper recess of my heart until they submitted and turned to joy instead. I believed faith only concerned intellect, and my emotions got more in the way than helped.
Yet Jesus showed me a better way.
Jesus wants all of me—my mind and my heart. As James K. A. Smith writes in You Are What You Love, “Jesus is a teacher who doesn’t just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn’t content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, and your longings.”
Jesus wants your big feelings—not to squash, but to find their fulfillment in him. He wants to hear your heart cry out to him. Feeling deeply and widely isn’t a character flaw or a sin, but another way we can worship and serve God with our entire selves. Consider this Psalm of lament that God preserved in his Holy Book:
“Turn, Lord! Rescue me; save me because of your faithful love. For there is no remembrance of you in death; who can thank you in Sheol? I am weary from my groaning; with my tears I dampen my bed and drench my couch every night. My eyes are swollen from grief; they grow old because of all my enemies” (Ps. 6:4–7)
These words were written one who trusted in Yahweh and would have been sung at the weekly worship times in Israel. These words aren’t persevered for us to condemn and learn to do better, but to mimic in our prayers and worship. Has your sorrow ever felt so deep you could feel it in your bones? Has your grief swelled so strong inside you that you felt weary from crying? Like the psalmist, maybe you soak your bed with tears each night, and your eyes are swollen from sobbing. Friend, such sadness is not foreign to believers. There are several other psalms similar to this one that cry out in lament (Ps. 6; 10; 38; 42–43; 103).
Feeling the weight of sadness, whether it has cause or not, is never a reason to feel shame. Rather, we can take hope that as believers God sees our tears. David wrote that God holds our tears in a bottle (Ps. 56:8). God sees our sorrow, and he does not judge us for it—he draws near to the broken-hearted (Ps. 34:18). Sometimes, the only prayer we can speak is through tears, and that is okay.
Remember Your Imperishable Hope
As believers, the star in our night of sorrow is our eternal hope. Though we may still feel the ache, this will never change: Christ redeemed us from hell and one day he will raise us to a new life, where there will be no more pain or tears. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). As believers, we live in this beautiful reality of being able to cry with joy, because we have this as our imperishable hope.
Perhaps in the midst of your dark night of the soul, you wonder if you’ll possibly be able to endure with faith to the end—or if your faith would be turned to ash.
Part of the beauty and hope of the gospel is that we were not only given eternal life, but we do not keep hold of it either. We do not sustain ourselves. Your faith to believe is first given by God and then also sustained by him. Jesus promises he will keep each believer and raise them to eternal life (John 6:39). It’s only by God’s gift of grace you still believe and you have made it this far, and it will be by grace that you continue.
Trust That God is Near
As we live in this seemingly endless night, we can also trust that God is with us. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,’ Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You” (Ps. 139:11–12).
I’ve spent many nights weeping on my knees, begging God to draw near and comfort me, and then shaking my fist at him because my chest continued to echo with emptiness. In seasons of anxiety, depression, grief, loss, exhaustion, or any kind of suffering, God may feel distant to us, but that does not mean he is absent. In seasons of waiting, it may feel as if our prayers hit the ceiling fan and come circling back down, but that is far from true. God is always near us. For the believer, he resides inside us—fully and constantly. You can’t lose the Holy Spirit, nor have more or less of him. He is with you constantly, and there is no place on earth that you could go to run from his presence.
Our hearts are deceptive and create feelings that, at times, bear no truth. During those times, we must cling to the truth we know about God—he is with us always, to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). When our hearts cry like the psalmist’s, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” we need to cry back, even if our lips quiver, “Even darkness is not dark to you.” When we feel as if God is silent to our prayers, we have his Word that is living and active, where he continues to speak to us by means of applying his Word to our hearts.
Don’t lose heart, friend. God is near, even now, even in your darkest moment. He is listening, and he has spoken through his Word to you. In your loneliness, in your misery, turn to our omnipresent God, who has saved you and will save you to eternal joy and peace.
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