Leaning toward the light

A friend recently sent me this email:

"Night time is painful. There's the loneliness of being in a dark room. It's very conflicting--hiding under the covers is all I want to do all day, but if I fall asleep, which I always do, there's the threat of a new day. It's a no win situation."

As I responded to her I began to wonder, "What is it that makes us afraid of the dark?"

And I thought about how we began this life in darkness. Genesis 1:1-4 (King James Version) states,

"1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

Verse 4 says that God felt the light was good. From this, are we supposed to believe that the darkness is bad, or at least not as good as the light? Other mentions of darkness in The Bible would lead me to believe darkness is not the desirable state.

Psalm 88:1-6 (KJV) tells us,

"1 O lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: 2 Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; 3 For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. 4 I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength: 5 Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. 6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps."

Again we are told that the darkness in verse 6 is not where our salvation lies.

Proverbs 4:19 (KJV) brings up another reason many people fear the dark. This verse declares,

"The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble."

I don't believe that many of us are truly afraid of the dark. Our fear lies in what the dark may hide. We sense a lack of preparation on our part. Suddenly, one of the senses most of us rely on most heavily is gone.

Could we have prepared for the darkness if we had been forewarned?

And I'm not just referring to a spiritual darkness. How many of us live in a self-imposed darkness of ignorance, abuse, doubt, or any other detrimental emotion? What would it take to pull us out of that and begin living a new kind of life?

We are not often warned about impending darkness nor are we given an opportunity to prepare ourselves for it. The only thing we can do is be aware that darkness exists and continue to believe that it does not have to be a permanent state.

Plants automatically grow toward the light. Begin your journey and lean toward it yourself.