Daily Devotional

Fear of the Dark.  I think this is a very common phenomenon that most people experience in their lifetime. As we get older, I think most of us grow out of our fear of the dark and yet I believe many of us carry a different kind of fear of the dark well into adulthood.

In the passage above we see this kind of fear of darkness manifested in the people of Israel. The passage in which these verses are found comes immediately after the giving of the Ten Commandments, the guidelines and requirements that Yahweh gave to his people so that they might experience the abundant life that he desired for them. This event included many special effects; thunder, lightning, trumpets, and smoke. 

Amazingly the children of Israel heard the voice of Yahweh audibly. Yet, the result of all of these things, was not a greater trust in God, in his power or in his care but rather a deathly fear. This was not the fear (reverential awe) of the LORD which the writer of Proverbs says is the beginning of wisdom (9:10) but bone- rattling, down-to-your toes dread of the strange, the unknown, the dark. The Israelites fear was so great that they asked for a buffer, an intermediary, between themselves and God. They pleaded with Moses; “You speak to us and we will listen but do not let God speak to us lest we die.”     

The first part of verse 21 provides a great picture of the plight of the children of Israel: “The people stood far off…”. But in the remainder of verse 21 we discover something very strange; “while Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.” Moses stands in stark contrast to the rest of the Israelites. They want to avoid, run away from, escape from the deep darkness, while Moses desires to draw near to the darkness. Was Moses braver than everybody else? I don’t think so. Earlier in Exodus, we read that when Moses encounters God in the burning bush he fell to ground overcome with fear (3:6). 

Later in the same conversation, Moses kindles God’s anger, partly because even after several miraculous signs and multiple assurances that God will go with him, Moses still demonstrates reluctance (fear) to do what God has commanded him to do (4:1-14).  I think Moses, like everyone else, was deeply afraid of the dark.  Despite his fear, Moses approaches the thick darkness.  Why? The text gives us the answer. He drew near to the thick darkness because that’s where God was. At first glance, this also seems to contradict to the witness of the rest of the Bible. The Bible frequently employs light and darkness as metaphors.  Light usually symbolizes God or God's presence.  Paul tells us that God “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16). John tells us that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5b). Conversely, darkness is commonly used as a metaphor to signify God's absence.  In several parables, Jesus uses darkness as a symbol of final judgement and condemnation (Matt. 22:13, 25:30). Yet in Exodus 21 we are told that the place where we find God is in the “thick darkness.”

How do we make sense of this? We all, at some point in our lives, encounter experiences, events or situations that are so horrendous that they send us reeling and cause us to question God’s good care in our lives. When I was twenty-three years old my father passed away, suddenly and very unexpectedly. My father’s sudden death rocked my world and it also rocked my young faith. I would still call myself a Christian. I still participated in many “Christian” activities but deep-down God became very scary for me, and like the children of Israel I began to keep God at arm’s length.   My father’s death was my thick darkness. It was the last place that I thought I would find God, and so for the next several years I developed various mechanisms to cope with my thick darkness such as avoidance, denial and medicating. The problem was that none of these activities brought any light into my thick darkness and eventually my darkness began to leak out and affect all of my relationships. Finally I came to the realization that if I was going to find God and the healing that God desired for me I would have to, like Moses, go into the thick darkness and find the God who dwells in there.

But how do we know that we will find God in the thick darkness? This is Good Friday and in the Gospel of Mark we read a familiar account of Jesus’ suffering on the cross: “And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out ‘Eloi Eloi, lema sabachthani’ which means, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’”. In our place, as our perfect substitute, Jesus also went into the thick darkness. But unlike our darknesses, Jesus literally went into the God-forsaken darkness. Why? So that when we enter our thick darkness we can know for sure we will find God there.  

What is your “thick darkness”? Have you, like the children Israel, been standing far off, afraid to really venture into your thick darkness? Let me encourage to be like Moses, and despite your fear, despite the pain draw near to the thick darkness because that’s where God is. Then you will be able to proclaim with David “even darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day for darkness is as light with you” (Psalm 139:12)