God’s Light in the Darkness of Our Soul

A recent study of the word “darkness” opened up for me a new understanding of “suffering”.  Here is the discovery:The Bible tells us that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. (Gen. 1:2)   Darkness in Hebrew is choshek, (pronounced khoe’-shek). It means more than literal darkness.  It suggests suffering, misery and sorrow, destruction and death.So when I read the references to darkness in Scripture, and equated that word with misery and suffering, the Holy Spirit opened up some ideas.What does the Almighty God do  with the choshek  (darkness/suffering)?1.  The Creator forms both choshek and light.  For our sake, God easily separates the light from the darkness. (Gen. 1:4).  But to God choshek (darkness) and light are just alike, because to God the night is as bright as the day. (Ps. 139:11,12.)2.   God can place choshek over people, as he did using Moses in Egypt at the time of the Passover.  God said, “Stretch out your hand. . . so that darkness will spread over Egypt, a darkness that can be felt.”  (Ex. 10:21).  Because He is our Heavenly Father, He can cause light and darkness in our lives, which He equates with our well-being and our calamity.  (Is. 45:7). God knows that man’s natural inclination is to love darkness instead of light, and he gives us free choice: (John 3:19)  Do we want to live in darkness or in light?3.  God speaks out of the choshek. We can hear God in the midst of our suffering.   When Moses was on the mountain to meet with God, the Almighty spoke in the choshek.   The people heard his voice even while the mountain was burning with fire. They declared that they had seen his glory and his majesty. (Deut 5:23). 4.  God turns our darkness into light. He illumines us while we experience the choshek.  (2 Sam 22:29, Ps. 18:28)   He promises that when we walk in choshek we will see His great light. (Is. 9:2).  We just have to ask.5.   In choshek, God brings deep mysteries to the light. (Job.12:22). He promises to give us treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, so that we will know that He is the Lord God of Israel who calls us by name. (Is. 45:3).  In my case, because a loved one was suffering, I searched Scripture for help, and this study is the result. God brought deep revelation out of my loved one’s choshek. How can we manage choshek, our darkness and suffering,  when it becomes our experience?1.  God suggests that we make choshek our closest friend. (Ps. 88:18).  He asks us to “sit silently and go into darkness.”  (Is. 47:5)2.   When we walk through the choshek, God offers us a lamp. (Job. 29:3). Our Heavenly Father holds the flashlight over our head so that we can expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness and repent.  (Eph. 5:11)3.   When we are struggling, God urges us to give ourselves to the hungry and meet the needs of the afflicted. When we reach out to others, even if we don’t feel like it,  then “our life will rise in the choshek/darkness and the gloom will become like the noon day.”  (Is. 58:10)4.  When we are in the depth of choshek, we need to connect with Jesus. God has sent us the Messiah, the Rising Sun from heaven, to shine on those of us sitting in choshek  and the shadow of death. (Luke 1:78)  With Jesus, our experience of darkness will be transformed into light.Jesus, the Light of LIfe, does not walk in choshek because in His atmosphere of light,  there can be only love, forgiveness of sins and a kingdom inheritance. (Acts. 26:18.)[His once-and-for-all-time in the darkness, wrestling choshek, was on the Cross.]5.   When God said “let light shine out of darkness” (2 Cor. 4:6), He enabled His light to shine in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.   This is our choice. His gift is the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God.”   How do we receive that?  By looking at the face of Christ, the very image of God.We are to fix our eyes on Jesus in the midst of our choshek.  Why?  Because He endured the Cross for each of us.  He literally took our choshek — our darkness, misery, suffering — into his own Person and partnered with us in that pain. How He absorbed it is a mystery!But what a blessing!Thank you, Jesus.