Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psalm 139:12

The days keep getting darker.
Not figuratively, I mean they are literally getting darker.
Sunset was at 4:36 today.
Tomorrow it’ll be 4:35.

What. The. Heck.

As a sun-seeker, winter can be difficult.
It feels so dark.
And the dark isn’t always fun.
In fact, the dark can be downright scary.
I remember as a kid, the basement lights had to be turned off at the BOTTOM of the stairs so I’d turn them off and then run up the dark stairs as fast as my little legs could possibly take me.
Heaven forbid the furnace would choose that moment to cycle on.
It was terrifying.
And as I lived in the country, night was NIGHT.
There wasn’t all this ambient city light to ease us into it.
When the sun went down, it was dark.
Now as an adult, I’m not afraid of the dark anymore, and in fact, I’m the one going around my house constantly turning off lights that my own daughter has left on because she’s afraid of the dark.
She’s gotten really good at reaching into a room to hit the light-switch before actually having to go in there.
And with each day needing more and more light because of less and less daylight, I’ve been wondering – what is it about the dark that we are so afraid of?

The Cancer Support Group here at Prince of Peace read a lovely book by Barbara Brown Taylor last month, called “Learning to Walk in the Dark.”
In it, Taylor wonders if maybe we’ve been doing it all wrong.  
What if, instead of being afraid of the dark, we instead learn to be in it?

“Even when light fades and darkness falls -as it does every single day, in every single life – God does not turn the world over to some other deity. Even when you cannot see where you are going and no one answers your call, this is not sufficient proof that you are alone. …  but whether you decide to trust the witness of those who have gone before you, or you decide to do whatever it takes to become a witness yourself, here is the testimony of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bring as the day.”

God is with us in the dark.
In the darkest dark.
All of it.
Because darkness to God is not dark at all.
Darkness becomes less scary, less dark, when we start to realize God is in it with us.
Even when we can’t see our hand in front of our face, God is there.
So no need to run around turning on all the lights.

Sit in the dark.
Feel God there with you.
Because he is.