We meet God in the strangest places.

Meeting God in the Darkness

by Chaplain R. Lewis

So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick Darkness where God was.  Then the Lord said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: "You have seen that I have talked with you from Heaven.  You shall not make anything to be with me, gold or silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves." Exodus 20:21-23 

We all have our prisons. For some it's just literal. But face it, the lessons we have to learn are the same whether we are incarcerated literally or in private personal prisons.  These are dark places where we don't think God can find us or even want to.  Wrong.  It's only dark because we don't realize God is in the darkness too.  The moment you comprehend this, your understanding of God will expand and perhaps relief will come to your soul.           

The people were responding to fear, but the wrong kind. Some were in rebellion, some were traumatized from Egyptian abuses, others were afraid of the future not knowing this strange land and the new responsibilities.  I imagine some were aware of their own sin and were ashamed to come before God.  They were afraid.  They were used to Egyptian gods who had to be appeased and wanted someone in the middle as a mediator.  God was busy teaching them who HE was.  He wanted relationship with them without a human go between.  He was teaching them he was a just God and obedience is foundational, but he was taking them deeper in the revelation of who HE is, to the place where obedience leads to understanding the God who is revealing himself to his beloved creation as redeemer and God of Love.  To do that he had to build a trust in them that would lead them to be still and know the God who not only commands the light but has power over the darkness, the things they could not see or understand.  God spoke to Moses from the darkness and Moses walked toward God.  Moses saw only God, not the darkness. 

We become afraid when we have equated other things as being equal to God in the task of helping us in our pilgrimage. But as our trust in God grows, we learn when God calls from even in the midst of darkness that God is light and in HIM is no darkness at all.  Fear of a Holy kind then invades our spirit.  The fear of God, that Holy awe, permeates and abolishes the terrifying, consuming, destructive fire of human earthbound fear that defeats us.  It is replaced with the awe of our Holy God.  When we fear God, we stand amazed in his presence, and realize that this God didn't have plans to destroy and start over when we sinned, but revealed himself to us further, by sending a Redeemer.  Christ, though he is equally God, took upon himself the form of man, so we would see he did provide that mediator who speaks for us.  But Christs sacrifice is far more that any human Moses factor.  It is complete in that it goes further, removing the human mediator standing between us which has caused us to "stand afar off" from a God who would embrace us.  We now can see only God, though surrounded with our life stories of abuse, injustice, failure, even death.  The cross of Christ forms in us the awe of God and, like Moses, we then can respond and walk directly to God even if He is surrounded by thick darkeness.