My daughter has a blanket over her head.
“I can’t see, mama,” she calls delightedly as she stumbles about giggling and banging off door frames. Yet this momentary darkness is all just a game; at any moment she can take the blanket off and see where she’s going.
But real life isn’t like that, is it?
This year in particular feels a lot like stumbling about in the dark. In fact, Isaiah could have been writing about 2020 when he wrote: “We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows (Isaiah 59:9, NIV).
It might sound a bit hyperbolic to some and yet for others the darkness of this season is tangible. We can’t make plans; we can’t move forward; we can’t see what’s ahead. We are treading water, waiting for direction, ever hopeful that things will change. And if they don’t? Well, sometimes we get impatient and decide to forge our own way ahead anyway. And spoiler alert, it doesn’t often end well.
“Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God,” Isaiah says. “But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment” (Isaiah 50:10-11, NIV).
When the road ahead is dark, our choice is clear: surrender or self.
We can choose to inch forward on the path unknown to us, relying on the Light of the World completely to guide our every step or we can rely on ourselves—and our own rudimentary light—blindly and hastily bushwhacking through the darkness to get to the closest thing we can find to a destination. Even if it’s not the one we truly want.
So though the trials of this unknown season can be hard to endure friends, let’s be women of faith today who choose to wait on the Light; trusting and relying on the God who promises to walk with us through the darkness.
