Walking the Dark Valley (Part 2)

God is with us, walking everywhere incognito, as C. S. Lewis said. “And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.” The main thing to remember is to make ourselves think about His presence; to acknowledge that He is with us, as real as He was in the days of His flesh when He walked with His disciples amid the sorrows and haunts of this world.

Difficulty and drudgery make us think of  ourselves as being all alone, but He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Of Him alone it can be said, He will never say goodbye.

Ultimately the dark alleys can make God more real to us than ever before. “God becomes a reality,” Richard Foster said, “when he becomes a necessity.” How many times have I heard from those who have endured intense suffering that the experience of their pain pulled them away from idolatries and eventually enlarged their intimacy with their Shepherd, which is what brings us peace and unimaginable joy.

We’re inclined to fix on the valley and its pain, but God chooses to look forward and anticipate its effect. He deals with our divided hearts through disappointment, grief, and tears, weaning us from other loves and passions and centering us on Him. We learn to trust Him in the darkness; when all that is left is the sound of His voice and the knowledge that He is near; when all we can do is slip our hand into His and feel “the familiar clasp of things divine.” These are times that wean us away from sensuality—that tendency to live by feelings rather than by faith in God’s unseen presence. We become independent of places and moods and content with God alone.

The dark days cause us to enter into a very special relationship with our Lord. As Job said,

My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42:5).

There are glimpses of God that can only be revealed when earthly joy has ceased.

David himself understood the adversity hat draws us to God’s heart. Subjected to neglect by his mother and father and demeaned by the rest of his family, he was deeply scarred. His family would have ruined him if he had not fled to his heavenly Father for refuge. Out of his loneliness and heartache David wrote,

Though my father and mother forsake me,
the Lord will receive me (Psalm 27:10).

David was hammered and hurt throughout his entire life, every blow converting him, exposing his ambivalence, until he would finally cry,

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me . . .
Create in me a pure [undivided] heart, O God (Psalm 51:5, 10).

God’s work is never done. As F. B. Meyer said: “Thus always—the rod, the stripes, the chastisements; but amid all, the love of God, carrying out His redemptive purpose, never hasting, never resting, never forgetting, but making all things work together until the evil is eliminated and the soul is purified.”

Then David cried out, “My soul finds rest in God alone” (Psalm 62:1). It was through darkness, suffering, and pain that all David’s passions were integrated into one.

And so all of life is consummated in loving God. That’s what we were made for; that’s where ultimate satisfaction lies. If that’s true, and I firmly believe it is, then although it is often hard to do, we should welcome any valley that leads us to Him.

One thing more: No valley goes on forever. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. God knows what we can endure. He will not let us be tempted or tested beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). The deliverance we seek may be subject to delay, but we must never doubt that our day will come.

Weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

Sorrow has its time to be, but God will mitigate the tears when their work is done. Those who mourn will be comforted. There will be an end.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.