dark night is a long way from home

Date: 21 March 2012 00:06:54

Forty blogs of Lent

25

Dark night is a long way from home. (with apologies to Deep Purple) Or is it? A lot of talk in Christian circles, and particularly in my experience in Evangelical ones, is that having committed your life to Jesus and having the power of the Holy Spirit living within, life should be one of feeling God's presence every day, prayer should be as easy as breathing, evangelism - or at least witnessing - should naturally pour from your life. Well I've been there, done that, got several t-shirts as one would expect from a former Charismatic worship leader. But that has not been the norm. For most of my 37 years as a Christian it has been more difficult than that. Evangelism is a chore, and I've probably put more people off Christianity by my behaviour than I've ever attracted. Prayer is not as natural as breathing, sometimes it is very difficult to pray at all. The Bible, which after conversion was a book of almost weekly insights and inspiration, can at times be ponderously dull. Meditation has to be worked at. I still get moments of inspiration. But they are rare, moments of illumination are more like lightening flashes in a dark night than the brilliance of a sunny day? Mentioning dark nights brings me to the subject of this blog. The dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul, a term thought up by Spanish mystic St John of the Cross is a time when a person's spiritual life can be defined by a sense of loneliness and abandonment by God. a feeling that you are not in control. God does not seem to be there, or if he is he doesn't care. But experiences of people who have been through a dark night experience say that the opposite is true. it is a time that God moves most profoundly in their lives. Still trusting in God when feeling that he has abandoned us can lead to growth not just in the spiritual life, but emotionally too. Am I experiencing a sort of mild dark night, or is it just one of the mild depressions I'm prone to? I don't know, being able to say I'm experiencing a dark night of the soul would be a great excuse, but it isn't something I can claim. One thing I do know though, not being in control is not necessarily a bad thing. If God let me have control I know from past experiences that I tend to mess up big time.