"" Writer's Wanderings: Sunday Worship Thoughts - Fear the Dark?

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sunday Worship Thoughts - Fear the Dark?


There is not a long list of things I truly fear. If I were to order them it would start with snakes, tornadoes (I tend to pace when the storm warnings go up), falling from a high place (although this usually happens in a nightmare) and then the list would branch into much lesser things that just tend to quicken the pulse when encountered. I didn't think darkness was on the list until an incident that happened while we were in Australia.

If you follow my posts, you saw the funny picture of my husband standing next to the Nissan SUV we rented for our drive through the desert from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs. Under that fly-netted hat, he's sporting a big grin. Yes, he is a bit of a jokster at times and I was soon to experience it once again.

As we were about to start out for Kings Canyon, we discovered that the battery in the SUV was dead. Someone (who is used to his headlights automatically shutting off) had left the lights on. We found some accomodating valets who located a jumper cable and were just about to give the SUV a jump when Bob tried it one more time and it started. Unfortunately, it locked us out of the audio equipment on the SUV and the display kept flashing "Enter Code" at us to no avail. We had no code.

We tooled along in silence for the 3 1/2 hour trip to Kings Canyon and when we were turned away because of the flooding there and faced a four hour drive to Alice Springs, I knew we needed some noise to keep the driver from drifting off. I fished out my new phone that, out of the country, could only be used as a MP3 player and set it to play the list of golden oldies that I'd downloaded.

So there we were, darkness had fallen. There was not another car on the road. No lights in the distance in any direction and I'm singing along with the songs of the 60s. (Maybe that's the reason for what happened next.)

I heard Bob say, "I wonder how dark it is?" And in the next instant, I was plunged into total darkness. HE'D TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS!!

We're tooling along at 120 kilometers/hour (I'm guessing that's around 65-70 mph) and he turns off the lights! It was only for a second but it seemed an eternity. I'm not a screamer but I screamed. It was the blackest black I have ever experienced. There was no moon to illuminate the landscape that night. I worked in a darkroom when I took a photography class at college but even that was not as black as this. It was as though I had no body and there was just this consciousness of me. I had no reference to anything.

Heart pounding, I tried to shake off the sensation of being in total darkness. Separation from God is said to be total darkness--an eternity if you have never accepted Jesus as Savior. I can certainly see now why Jesus is said to be light.

"When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'"
John 8:11-13

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