Edge of Darkness
“The Almighty—we cannot find Him;” Job 37:23a NASB
Cannot – “Only those who have gone through days on which words were of no avail, on which the most brilliant theories jarred the ear like mere slang; only those who have experienced ultimate not-knowing, the voicelessness of a soul struck by wonder, total muteness, are able to enter the meaning of God, a meaning greater than the mind. There is a loneliness in us that hears. When the soul parts from the company of the ego and its retinue of petty conceits; when we cease to exploit all things but instead pray the world’s cry, the world’s sigh, our loneliness may hear the living grace beyond all power. We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.”[1]
We want comfort. We want assurance. We want peace in our time. We want the spiritual blessing that comes from knowing God is with us, doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves. We want Him to take care of things. We want the full measure, pressed down, running over—all the good stuff we were promised if we just accepted Jesus as our Savior. That’s what we wanted. It’s what we still want.
But most of us didn’t get it. Why? Why didn’t those promises we counted on actually come to pass? Well, we could pretend that they were eschatological; that they will only actually come to pass sometime in the future when Jesus reigns. A sort of “end times” bait-and-switch approach. Promise things now but really don’t deliver until much later—usually after we’re dead.
Or we could pay attention to Heschel’s insight. We aren’t going to find God until we are willing to hear the loneliness of creation. And that includes us. We won’t know God until we skirt the edge of darkness. It’s not about us. It never was. It’s about the longing of God to restore His creation to its original purpose—and the utter disappointment at the devastation and divergence that exists as a result of leaving God’s purpose behind. We can’t find Him because we aren’t willing to empty ourselves of our own intentions, our own expectations. We don’t want to hear that cry that is deeper than our souls can bear. We want the promises without the heartache. As Albert King sang, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Besides, hearing the real cry of creation is terrifying.
Once in a while we brush up against this pitiless agony. We see the results of an oil spill. Baby ducklings struggling to survive. We watch the news as a mass grave is unearthed. Children, women—now as deteriorating bodies. We see a bear in flames running from a fire. We walk a beach covered with needles from medical trash. We see the infamous photo of the Somali child with the vulture. Once in a while the agony comes incredibly close. We turn off the television. We cross the street. We cover our children’s eyes. We think of nice things. We buy an ice cream. We try to forget that the world is in serious decline, collapse, ethical suicide. We distract ourselves so we won’t have to listen to that whisper, that roaring, inaudible scream from deep within, from a place where there are no words because there is no mercy. We can’t hear grace because we will not listen to terror.
There is a reason God is found in the wasteland, the midbar. The reason is that in that place we are not at home. It takes enormous courage to venture into the wasteland to seek Him. It’s so much easier to remain in the world of distractions—to die there—while all along God was calling from the deep. God is good company for the spiritually lonely. All the rest of us pass Him by.
Topical Index: loneliness, cry, wilderness, Job 37:23a
[1] Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), p. 140.
