Dark Nights

January 27, 2019

Jacob’s tale continues to intrigue me. Were he alive today, he would be a shrewd businessman, perhaps CEO of a major corporation. Right from the start, he knew what he wanted, and let nothing and nobody stand in his way of getting it. He’s clawed and climbed his way to the top. We would say he had it made. But something wasn’t right, and he knew it. He was living in a foreign land, not just geographically, but spiritually too. The God he claimed to worship didn’t inhabit the place where he was, and he knew—just knew—that he had to get back to his roots.

There was just one problem. For 40 years he had tackled life on his own terms, and that was how he ended up in this foreign land, a stranger and alien who didn’t really fit in. Sometimes that smooth exterior masks a jagged and bleeding soul. But Jacob didn’t know that. Yet. He was still doing life on his own terms.

On his way back home, he gets wind of his brother, the one he had cheated out of a substantial fortune years before, coming to meet him. With a small army. Suddenly, Jacob’s well-oiled plan begins to unravel. This was not the happy reunion he had imagined. If that weren’t enough, he finds himself confronted by a stranger who fights him no matter which way he turns. Every avenue of escape is blocked, and Jacob is stymied for the first time in his life. No amount of scheming works. Even the last trick up his sleeve—demanding the name of his adversary—fails. He can’t even identify what the problem is, so he there’s no way he can fix it.

Perhaps you’ve been there. I know I have. I thought I knew all about growing a church. I had gone to all the seminars, studied the books, gotten the best mentors—and it still collapsed, leaving me empty and spent, with no escape, and not a single clue as to how to get out of the mess I was in. Everyone’s Waterloo is different, but sooner or later, we all come to the place where nothing we’ve tried works anymore. We’re worn out, beaten by life, and scared of what lies ahead. 

But it’s in that dark valley of despair where we come to the end of our own resources that we meet the God who confronts our stubborn selves, stubbornly refusing to give up on us. He could pin us to the ground with ease, but lets us struggle on till our strength is gone and we finally yield ourselves to him. 

He still refuses to be named. We still may not have the answers we seek, but this unnamed Adversary gives us a new name—a new identity and future, and the darkest night can turn into a new dawn that begins an entirely new life of grace and favor with God. Those dark times are never fun; they are often as bad as we think them to be, but if as we struggle in the darkness, we meet Jesus Christ, it’s all worth it. Paul Simon said it well a generation ago: “Hello Darkness, my old friend...” Our worst darkness may be where our best new beginning takes root. I am thankful tonight for this scripture from Genesis 32, and the hope it gives for anyone who finds himself in a dark valley. The night will pass, the dawn break, and we can have a new name and a new future. Thank you, Jesus!