Within the Darkest Night

Deep in the darkest night, God kindles a fire that never dies away…



I am a dark night. To God the darkest night is like midday. I cannot see, blinded as I am. God sees everything, the whole of me. This is what he was trying to teach the Pharisees about self-righteousness, how whatever I do to make myself right in God’s eyes is blindness. He makes us right, he himself alone without any action on our part. “If this is true,” Peter might say, “who can be saved?”

 I am a dark night. My best efforts cannot avail, cannot reach to him, cannot carry me to him. Only he can re-unite us. Only he can save me. What then can a person do when one sees and knows one’s own darkness?


I am a dark night. There is no escaping it. This is what happened to us all after Eden. We entered a world of darkness and sin. The darkness and the sin were in us, came through us, afflicted the world in which we dwell. The darkness overwhelmed us. We became the people who live in darkness…


I am the dark night. God kindles a fire in me that never dies. He knows how. He knows when and where and why, all beyond my understanding. I cannot strike my own light. God must do it for me, and throughout this journey to which he has drawn me I must remember to ask him to do it. It must become my prayer-of-every-breath; the prayer I have searched for all my life.


Kindle the fire in me, God. Set me ablaze…






041910 8:06 pm