Finding Jesus in the Dark

Grief is a strange human experience. It can knock the breath out of you one minute, and bring a sense of relief, even hope the next minute. I have lost several people who are important to me to death through the years. Each loss is different. Each memory unique. As unique as each person who once was with me in this life. Just as each person and each loss is unique, so too, is the process of healing and remembering peculiar to that particular scenario. In short, every person processes grief differently.

I still miss all of my grandparents dearly. Their legacies live on in their children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. My father-in-law and my dad are both deceased. The impact that losing these two men, in the season of life of being a young father is something I wrestle with nearly every day. So many times, I wish I could ask them a simple question or share a moment of joy and even frustration with them. Like getting power tools to crank. Taking two weeks to figure out what was wrong with my vehicle and having the spare time to address the issues so that I could drive it again. Getting to see their grands would bring a huge smile to both faces.

I have two cousins, who lost battles with brain tumors and cancer. Cancer...such an ugly word. I sometimes would rather hear the vilest of swear words on repeat than to hear that word uttered. It is ugly, dark, sinister even to those who battle it and those whom it leaves in its wake.

Still, the death that haunts me most perhaps is of a student, Luke. Yesterday was the anniversary of his death, a death that continues to impact me and others in our community because as Isaiah 35 says, God is able to make a river in the desert. Luke's death has given way to life. Just as the seed must die in the ground when it is planted in order to bear fruit. Luke's death has brought life to others through his memory as well as a non-profit established in his honor.

It's funny how much death impacts believers in Christ. We know the end of the story. We know that victory is ours through Jesus. Through his life, death, and resurrection, we cling to the hope of the gospel and the promise of the resurrection so that death never has the final word.

...and still we scratch our heads looking for answers to make sense of it all. We try to put the pieces back together of our broken, fractured selves in our broken, fractured world that needs a broken savior. That is exactly who Jesus is! He is the one wounded for our transgressions. He is the one broken to make us whole. He is the one who experienced death, darkness, and hell so that the darkness we try to fight in this world and the hell we experience in this life is eclipsed by the one who after all brought light out of darkness at the foundation of the world, on a hillside called Calvary, and every moment when the darkness seems to overcome us.

I recently read through Frederick Buechner's two newest collections. They are classic Buechner in every sense. This phrase towards the end of A Crazy, Holy Grace struck me in the most profound way. "Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the dark than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit most often." Is it possible that death and grief stay with us to remind us of our own mortality, even more, to remind us of our dependence on the one who has claimed the final victory over death.

Darkness is not just about death and grief. Darkness could be lurking in any number of corners of our hearts and lives. Jesus offers light. He offers healing, He offers hope. He offers himself...and that is enough...ultimately!