Remembering the Darkness, Remembering the Light

Total Solar Eclipse, taken 21 August 2017.

…show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

Psalm 80, verses 3, 7, and 18

In the sweltering Florida summer of 1989, a bunch of us guys from our church youth group were driven about an hour into the country, where we converged upon the house of a particularly generous and patient member of our congregation, who had opened up her home so we could have an all-night binge of pizza, video games, and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. (I’m sure there was a responsible adult who sprinkled in some devotional time at some point, too.) After we had stuffed ourselves full of Hungry Howie’s and finished Bloodsport, one of the guys piped up, “I’ve got an idea… let’s play Flashlight Wars!”

We all agreed this was an excellent suggestion and quickly decided upon the rules of engagement.

• There would be two teams.

• Each player would have a flashlight.

• If a player from an opposing team shined his flashlight on you, you were dead, and you had to go back to the house.

• If all of the players on a team were killed, the players who were still alive on the remaining team would be the winners.

• There was a prize, but I didn’t win, as you’ll soon learn, and I don’t recall what the prize was.

Did I mention it was 3:00 AM? Did I also mention that the sky was overcast, moonless and starless, and that we had decided the arena for our skirmish would be the densely wooded and unpopulated 10 acre tract adjoining the back yard of our understandably concerned host? You are absolutely right, dear reader, that was a really stupid idea. We were teenage boys, though, so I hope you’re not too surprised.

Our team named itself the “Soldiers of Fortune,” or something similarly ridiculous, probably because we had all been wasting our hard-earned lawn-mowing wages buying issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine. We turned on our flashlights, headed into the woods, and quickly established our home base of operations. We then divided our team into groups of two or three and sent all but one group to scout out the enemy’s position.

I was one half of the group that stayed behind at home base. My partner and I sat on the damp ground in the dark for a few minutes. Then he got up, switched on his flashlight, and said, “You stay here. I’m going to go on patrol.”

“Okay,” I said, not really caring at that point. I’d expended all of my enthusiasm on the original idea to play the game and the subsequent plans surrounding our base, and how badly we would beat the other team. I watched the beam from his flashlight bob up and down, its light fractured at weird angles by the increasing number of trees between him and me. After a few minutes, I could no longer see his light.

More out of a need to comfort myself than out of necessity, I reached to the spot on the ground beside where I was sitting to grab my flashlight, intending to take a look around myself, and, if nothing happened within a few minutes, go and find where the action was.

My flashlight was gone.

I scrambled around on my hands and knees in the pitch black for several minutes, hoping he’d left his flashlight behind when he took mine. All I found were roots and rocks, which tore at my pants and scraped the palms of my hands. After a few moments, I gave up trying to find the flashlight, and I began shouting.

“Hello? Guys? Is anyone there? I can’t see! Hello!”

There was no answer. The only sounds where the chirping of crickets and the occasional buzzing of a mosquito in my ear.

I strained my eyes in every direction, scanning what I assumed was the horizon, hoping to see a porch light left on in the back of a house or a set of headlights on a nearby road. But I saw nothing but varying shades of shadow.

I screamed out the names of the boys who had left me there, screamed the name of the woman who’d seemed so nice only a few hours before, the woman I now hated. I screamed out the name of God’s son, begging him to rescue me, screamed and sobbed until my throat was raw and I’d vomited onto my own boots.

I began moving, in what direction I didn’t know, but I put one foot in front of the other, very slowly and carefully. I tripped on a root and landed with my knee on a rock. I roared as much as my voice could allow and got up again, limping. I felt my way past the tree which had ambushed me, only to snag my t-shirt on a thorny branch growing from the ground. I pulled away from the thorns too hard and too quickly, and I heard the small pffft of a tear in the cloth. Even though we had been following a clearly defined path through the woods on the way in, all I could find in the dark was more underbrush clogging the way out.

I finally gave up. I found the least uncomfortable spot on which to sit and began waiting for my friends to come find me.

It took hours.

And the longer I sat in the dark, alone, the closer my thoughts resembled the air around me.

They’ll never find me out here.

They don’t even know I’m missing.

They don’t care what happens to me.

I’m going to die out here.

Then I heard someone calling my name.

The boys from the youth group had gone back to the house, eaten more pizza, watched another movie, and had begun claiming spots on beds and couches and carpeted floors to unroll their sleeping bags for the few remaining hours in the night. When they noticed my sleeping bag still rolled up in the corner of the living room, they’d ventured back outside to look for me.

Hoarse as I was, I yelled their names in hopes they’d hear me, banging a couple of sticks together for good measure. But it was the light that saved me. One of the flashlight beams hit me from the waist up, and the shadows my flailing arms were casting on the tree behind me caught the attention of one of the boys. Fifteen minutes later, I was inside the house, eating cold pizza, guzzling Mountain Dew, and laughing with the others about the entire ordeal.

Standing in the light, it was easy to forget the darkness from which I was rescued.

---

As we finish up this first week of Advent, the novelty of this blessed church season can begin to lose its luster in our hearts. It can become difficult to walk the line between the somber and celebratory. It can be difficult to remember the darkness.

But remembering is a vital practice for Christians, and one that should be viewed as an active pursuit. As Tsh Oxenreider said,

…remembering isn't just remembering to do things. It's actually a form of being. It's a form of bringing something back to life. So if you think of the opposite of the word dismembering, which is taking apart, remembering is putting it back together. So the liturgical calendar is helping us remember the things that actually matter eternally in our lives…

This is why Advent is good for us. It invites us to participate with the rest of the church in putting back together some very important pieces that often get scattered and lost throughout the busier and brighter times of the year.

In Psalm 80, the psalmist pleads with the Lord three times, “show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” When we actively remember during Advent, we hold in our hearts through prayer, meditation, and liturgy three very important truths.

1. Christ came into the world to dispel the works of darkness, to defeat the power of death and hell, and to establish a kingdom for himself, to the glory of his Father in heaven, in order that he might fill up the entire universe. This work began at Christ’s conception through the blessed virgin, Mother Mary, and exploded into the world on the night of his birth. When we remember this brilliant inbreaking, we must also remember the ever dark and destitute state of the entire world, which began with our rebellion and pride in the garden.

2. Christ came into the world to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. He came to seek and save those who were lost, like you and like me, to make us a new creation, and to make us one with the Holy Trinity. If you have been joined with him, if you are following his ways because you love him, then he has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. When we remember how he has redeemed us and set us free, we must also remember the sin and death and hell from which we have been saved.

3. Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. He will make all things new, and, at the renewal of all things, restore unto us everything we have lost for his sake. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we shall reign with him forever and ever. When we look around at the darkness, pain, and trauma of the world, when we are tempted to despair, we must also remember the imminent second coming of Christ, who is coming in the clouds, and every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him.

When I was trapped and alone and crying out in the darkness of that central Florida woodland, the fear and anxiety that was ruling every moment of my existence distracted me from one very important truth that could've made a world of difference as I waited that night to be rescued: the sun was going to come out. No matter the depths of the darkness, no matter how powerless I was to escape, if I would have remembered the inevitable rising of the sun, I could have trusted and endured. I could even have made it to the other side stronger and more resilient.

In the same way, let us not succumb to our own outward weeping, our own inward gnashing of teeth at the volatile and black world in which we live. As we continue our journey through Advent, let us hold in our hearts the necessary tension between what was, what is, and what is promised to be when the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings and we are changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

Let us remember the darkness, and let us remember the light.