Only When It Is Dark Enough

“Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” —The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Last night, my heart was heavy. I couldn’t sleep. That’s how it’s been lately. Anxiousness is the pea under my mattress. No matter how I adjust my body, no matter how I contort my thoughts, I feel it there troubling me.

So, I picked up a book and went into our son’s old room. Maybe reading would wear me out. I sat down, opened the book, but I couldn’t concentrate. My eyes combed over full paragraphs, and then I would blink, shake my head, and read them again.

Eventually, I set the book aside and sank into my anxiousness. Some of my thoughts were…

I’m anxious about the state of the world.

I’m anxious about our political leaders prioritizing the pursuit of material gain for those who are already well-fed over the welfare of all of the most vulnerable among us.

I’m anxious about children starving in Gaza, Haiti, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, and it somehow being controversial to say that those children should be able to eat, that we should do everything in our power to feed them.

I’m anxious about a man summoning hundreds of this country’s top generals and admirals to give them a speech about a “warrior ethos” that proudly shuns diversity, promotes racism under the guise of eliminating beards, and shames fat people; and that tough guy speech being aimed not at the military leaders in the room so much as the countless boys and young men who will watch it on YouTube and ingest every word as a directive for their timid lives that long for validation and belonging.

I’m anxious about transgender people being vilified, immigrants and Brown folk being criminalized, homeless people being rounded up and institutionalized, women’s bodies being objectified and policed, our poor neighbors being dismissed, and that dismissal being justified by the adamant belief that poor people are to blame for their poverty, and all of this being trumpeted as “real” Christianity.

I’m anxious about the message of Jesus—a message that demands humility, sacrifice, mercy, justice, and love of God and neighbor—being propagated as weakness, and it pushed aside by the shiny toy of Christian nationalism that demands ideological fealty to the worship of earthly power over the worship of God.

I’m anxious about how we keep the faith in these troubling times. How do we remain steadfast in our commitment to feed the hungry, and care for the sick, and welcome the stranger, and comfort the afflicted, and visit the lonely, and clothe the naked, and to keep on loving God and one another with all we’ve got? How do we keep giving chemo treatments of hope to a body—our collective body—that is so exhausted by the aggressive cancer of hopelessness that it can’t take any more?

This was my anxiousness: the unshakable feeling that things are dark.

I decided to try going back to bed. I got up, walked to the bedroom door, and turned off the light. It got completely dark. And when it did, I looked up, and I saw stars. When he was a little boy, our son had put glow-in-dark stars all over the ceiling of his bedroom. I’d almost completely forgotten they were there. Almost.

Seeing those stars, a peace washed over me. And it was more than the sweet memories of my adult child when he was younger. It felt like the peace in Philippians 4:7 where it says, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Things are dark. But as surely as God promises Abraham that he will make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as surely as you and I are those stars, God intends welfare and not harm for everyone, and God envisions a future of hope for all. This is the eternal truth that dwells within each of us. It’s the ultimate reality that cannot and will not be denied by anything on earth. And in bleak times like these, the Creator of every good is summoning us to open our eyes to it.

I do not have faith the size of a mustard seed. We do.

I am not required to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. We are.

It is not upon me to do the work of healing and reconciliation in witness to the message of Jesus. It is upon all of us.

This is liberating. This is tangible hope.

I am not alone in yearning for a world where every child is fed.

I am not stranded on an island of anxiousness. I am delivered into a community where God’s vision of peace exceeds our limited understanding and invites us to keep moving forward into a Promised Land where no one is shunned, shamed, or dismissed, and all are welcomed, included, and loved.

In the face of today’s anxiousness, this is constant and true. And only when its dark enough can we see it.