Fear of the Dark

"Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard...

He gets along pretty well, as long as it is daylight,... but it's all no use.

The moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it is night, he goes out and

howls over the grave of God."

~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Conversation At Midnight

The other night, my dog was walking me down a very familiar sidewalk.  It was late, dark, yet she knew the way.  Suddenly, she just stopped dead in her tracks. She lifted her paw and looked intensely straight ahead.  I scanned for the neighborhood fox, the deer, or somebody coming the other way.  She took a few steps forward. Then she backed up. Hesitantly….she stepped forward, peering ahead. I thought to myself—it couldn’t be? She was afraid of the campaign sign in the yard!  As she inched forward, I tapped the sign, and she flew backwards—a real panic to get away.  

Okay—you get the idea and that it had nothing to do with the candidate!  This same yard sign was there every day.  She passed it without incident.  What is there about the night that brings out the fears?  

The quotation from Edna St. Vincent Millay is a powerful one.  The “dark” represents our lack of perception to see things as they really are.  Exactly what does the world look like without faith in God?  We can get by already in the light of the routine, but when the lights suddenly go out, we stumble around in darkness until our eyes adjust.  

I equate faith in God to a vision that sees God penetrating the darkness to come for us.  Let me say that another way.  We go into the darkness with less fear if we know that God comes to us and meets us there.  

One of the most memorable things said to me came in my college years—“if your God can die, let him get it over with.”  Only a God that lives in the worst of times and blackest of nights will do.  Sometimes it takes the lights going out to force us to learn how to see in the darkness.