Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

synchroblog

What about Saturday? {A Night Driving syncroblog}

A few years ago, our family snagged a local deal for a visit to a cavern attraction. Walking amongst the limestone formations is itself a memorable experience, but the one thing I’ll never forget is the darkness.

The tour is guided by lights, added obviously, for safety reasons and ease of navigation. But at one point in the tour, the person guiding the tour flips a switch and the cavern plunges into darkness.

Now I have camped in the woods and on the top of a mountain. I have lived in rural areas and experienced a fair share of power outages. But I can safely say that nothing prepared me for that kind of darkness.

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Rainer Taepper via Unsplash

Rainer Taepper via Unsplash

Nor did my faith experience prepare me for the kind of darkness lingering in my own heart.

I can’t remember a time when darkness hasn’t lurked on the edges of  my soul, always casting a shadow over even the best parts of my life. I have avoided darkness. Run past it. Held a flickering candle in shaking hands to keep it at bay. I have feared it. Denied it. Ignored it.

But it never went away completely.

So, I was surprised when God spoke a soul name over me that was quite the opposite of darkness. He lovingly whispered a name I couldn’t believe, and I know that sounds crazy, but if I could choose my own name, I wouldn’t have picked this.

The Bible is full of words about light overcoming darkness and people walking in darkness seeing light as if for the first time, of God providing leading at night, of promises that someday it will never be dark.

I don’t always know what to do with my darkness.

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Maybe that’s why the events of Holy Week frustrate me sometimes. At least in the traditions in which I’ve practiced, major emphasis is placed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and maybe Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.

But lately I’ve been wondering about Saturday. We kind of skip over it, and even the sorrow of Good Friday is always framed in the light of Easter Sunday. The whole it’s-Friday-but-Sunday’s-coming thing.

That’s easier to see now, in retrospect, but what about that first Easter weekend? Between the cross and the celebration, there’s a whole day of darkness and uncertainty.

Sometimes, I feel like this is where most of life is lived.

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The darkness in the cavern was terrifying, even though I knew it wouldn’t last long. I was holding a child and I couldn’t see his face. The darkness was more real than anything else in the cavern. I was surrounded by people but all I could see was darkness. I used to think darkness was the absence of seeing anything, but I remember being able to “see” the darkness.

I no longer want to fix my own darkness or wish it away. Because not everything that happens in darkness is bad. Bulbs and seeds buried beneath the ground take root and sprout and eventually bloom. What would spring flowers be without a bulb buried in darkness? What would the sunrise be without the night preceding it? What would spring be without the cold, dark winter before it?

After watching an episode of Wallender recently, my husband and I learned that in some parts of Sweden in a particular season, the sun never sets. Twenty-four hours of sunlight. How wonderful! I thought. Then, he told me that the opposite is true in the contrary season: 24 hours of darkness. No, thank you.

I need them both, I think, the darkness and the light. Yes, I want to live in the light, but the darkness is where I have to be sometimes. Dreams, hopes, wishes, they die in the darkness, and that’s okay. Maybe they need to. Or maybe they just need to be buried for a while so something else will spring up in their place.

In a valley where the light is obscured, maybe it’s easier to see inside myself. The darkness forces me to focus on what I can feel and hear, instead of only on what I can see. Maybe learning to see in the dark is another way to live out our faith.

This post is part of a syncroblog to celebrate Addie Zierman’s new book Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark. Click here to read more posts on this topic or to add your own.

STORIES OF EASTER: Remembering and telling so others will have joy {a synchroblog}

easter synchroblogThis week at the Convergent Books blog, various writers have been reflecting on the characters of the Easter story. Today, they’ve opened the topic to any blogger anywhere to write about a character in the Easter story and what their role can teach us today. To read other posts in the synchroblog, click here.

His letter begins with these words:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life–and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us–what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. (1 John 1:1-4, NASB)

He is John, the apostle, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and here, he is adamant: We heard Him, saw Him with our eyes, touched Him with our hands. This message we spread, this Gospel we preach, we were eyewitnesses! And we want others to believe because we saw it!

He almost fades into the background of the Easter story. We see glimpses of him but he’s not the first one we think of, at least he’s not the first one I think of. There are the women and Judas and Peter and the guards and Pilate and the religious leaders and Joseph of Arimathea. The Easter story is full of colorful characters, each with their own part to play, each with much to teach us about this most holy of days.

And yet, I find myself drawn to John, the storyteller.

Several years ago in a Sunday School class, we watched a video series about John’s final days in Ephesus. In it, he was painted as an old man telling the stories of his days with Jesus to anyone who gathered. He lived the longest of any of the disciples and his account of Jesus’ life is different in almost every way than that of the other writers.

Suddenly, I had a whole new appreciation for John, who must have spent all those years telling and retelling the stories. I wondered what he must have thought when he finally began to write them down. It was his life’s work. Yet even he admits that the whole world couldn’t contain all the books that could be written about what Jesus did (John 21:25).

But back to Easter and the events leading up to it.

His account of what we  now call Holy Week begins in chapter 12 of his Gospel. Could he still hear the crowds shouting, “Hosanna!”? Could he feel the crowd pressing in, surrounding Jesus, their King who had come? “We didn’t understand at the time,” he says, “but later, we remembered.” Did he smile at their ignorance? How they thought Jesus was there to overthrow Rome when, in fact, His plan was so much greater?

He walks us through the Last Supper, providing details about the extent of Jesus’ love. Did he remember what he felt when Jesus washed his feet? Did the memory of Peter’s insistence that Jesus not wash his feet bring bittersweet thoughts of his companion and friend? Could he taste the bread and wine? Did he still wonder why none of them suspected Judas of betrayal?

I love John’s words for their attention to detail. From him we get stories and words and actions we don’t get anywhere else. He was an observer as well as a participant, and his time with Jesus changed him. How could he forget such an important time of his life?

Chapters 14, 15, 16 and 17 of John’s Gospel are almost entirely in red in my Bible, the words of Jesus highlighted to stand out. Here, John passes on teachings, some listed as favorites among pastors and leaders: the vine and the branches, the prayers of Jesus for his disciples, for the world. Years later, as he writes, does John think of the significance of those teachings? Does he realize he is the link from Jesus to the generations to come? Or does he write because he’s called to it? Because somebody has to or no one will know? Does he know that his words will outlive him?

He continues with two whole chapters on the crucifixion and the events leading up to it. Did he cry as he wrote those scenes? Was he exhausted reliving the drama from the garden to the cross to the tomb? Did he lean in to the grief of those days so that his readers, his listeners would understand just how awful this was? John would get a faraway look in his eyes as he spoke. I can imagine how the emotions would have choked him as he told the story. Read John 19 out loud. Slowly. As if you can see it happening. But not even that is close to what it must have been like for John to remember.

But remember he did. And speak, he did. And write, he did.

And then the tomb. Empty!

How his heart must have raced remembering what it was like to sprint to the tomb and find Jesus gone. And the joy of seeing Him alive! In the locked room. On the shore.

Story after story after story and John’s theme is the same: “these have been written so that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” (John 20:31)

What I learn from John is that he didn’t keep Easter to himself. He didn’t keep Jesus to himself. He spent his life telling the story, not so that he would have a bestselling book with his name on it but so that those who weren’t there, those who didn’t see, those who don’t know, might believe and have life.

We all have a story to tell about our time with Jesus. Who needs to know what we’ve experienced so they, too, can have life?