Dan Cummings who is a pastor in suburban Detroit has a nasty form of cancer, a life-threatening form of cancer. His latest blog post discusses the valley of the shadow of death through which he is walking:
C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed expresses what so many, including me, experience in the dark night of the soul: “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him…you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as [well] turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.”
I have no answer for this, only humble silence. Lewis is correct of course and the life of the Psalmists generally support him (Psalms 42:3). Surely Joseph went through a dark night of the soul when he was thrown into prison by Potiphar with no hope of any help since the only people who knew he was in prison hated him. There is some solace in the fact that it is a common experience, that other's have gone through it, that when I experience it, I am not alone in the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment