Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark

Psalm 139 is one of my absolute favorite Bible passages for many different reasons. It’s a great passage about how much God knows me, how He made me, and how He has great plans for me. When I reread this passage recently, verse 12 struck me in a new light.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
–Psalm 139:11-12 (NIV)

How many times do I want to hide from God? When I mess up, aka sin, or just plain get it wrong. I always want to run and hide, but I never feel like I can. And now I know why it never works. In Bible college, my theology professor tried to explain it to me. There was one question on the test that I got wrong–and I didn’t understand why. He told me that we are always in God’s presence. There’s nowhere to hide. “For darkness is as light to you.” Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

If God is everywhere, even in my darkness, then it’s not really as dark as it seems. Is it? Of course it still hurts when things don’t go my way. Sometimes it really hurts. But instead of it being pitch black, maybe it’s really a charcoal gray with a light in the corner, waiting to burn away the darkness.

“Even the darkness will not be dark to you.” That means even in the darkness God is with me, holding me tight. Telling me it’s going to be okay. When I stop trying to fix it and let him take over . . .  it’s on, baby. He’s made a habit of transforming my blackest moment to charcoal gray, to light gray, to white as snow. In His own unfathomable, out-of-the-box way.

It’s still a process for me. Hey, I’m still learning, too. Learning to look for the light in the darkness. To watch and pray for it. And one day there will be no more darkness.