It’s around 2:30 AM and I’m awake and wandering in my dark home, thinking about how many lights there are.  Inside each room are various bright pinpoints of electronics, tiny stars in a house-bound firmament.  Outside, streetlights and porch lights create solitary islands of illumination.

I take a photo of my neighbor’s house from my second-floor window.  It seems so isolated, so lonely, reminding me of the forlorn disconnection of a Hopper painting.

Yet, if this feels lonely, imagine what real darkness creates.

In the last verses of Isaiah 8, we see God’s people descending into the true pitch black.  In their futility to find a message that will align with their stubborn plan to seek help from other nations, they have turned to occultic mediums, who consult the dead.  I’m not sure what they hope to hear from beyond the grave.  They’re clearly desperate.

Isaiah rebukes them with a rallying cry:  To the law and testimony!  (I can’t help but think: to the Batmobile!). In this moment of crisis, here is the light of truth they need.

To the law and to the testimony! If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.  (vs. 20-22)

I am thankful, as I stand in the murkiness of my nighttime house, that it doesn’t get truly dark.  I have had a few experiences – in a cave in Iceland, last year, for example – when I have been in absolute darkness, when I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.  Even surrounded by other people, it is a soul-shaking moment of seclusion.

Only a few seconds of utter darkness can unnerve us.

In despair, the Israelites discover the physical struggle that follows their spiritual betrayal, and they curse all external authority – unaware that they, themselves, are to blame.  Then they plunge into the “fearful gloom” of their own choices.

This is what sin does.  The DNA of sin is self.  We choose our will over God’s.  Believing that God doesn’t ultimately want or understand our good, we opt to find our own way to grasp it.  But in doing so, we turn from the light and descend into the isolation of our own darkness.

C.S. Lewis makes the choice clear:

“Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  (Mere Christianity)

I am thankful that there is a full moon tonight.  I find the bath of light soothing.  As I contemplate how easy it would be to descend into my own inner darkness of self, I’m comforted by the thought that there is the light of Christ to turn to.  And the grace of God to pull me toward him.

But there’s no hint of a moon in these closing verses of Isaiah 8.  The utter darkness closes in over God’s people.  It’s an important image to frame up in order to fully understand what comes next.

They have fashioned for themselves the true black of night.

Father, giver of light, we are ever tugged by the darkness.  Forgive us for when we wander into the isolation of sin against you.  And we pray for this dark work, Lord.  Help us to bring your light to those who wander in the gloom.

Reader:  Do you fear or take comfort in the dark?  Tell me why you feel that way.

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