Holy Darkness

As I was driving the other day I heard Rufus Wainwright cover Leonard Coehn’s Hallelujah.  Rufus changed a few of the verses from the original and one of his new lines goes “Remember when I moved in you; the holy dark was moving too, and every breath we drew was Hallelujah” As I heard the line “The Holy Dark was moving too.” I stopped. What does it mean? Holy Dark?   I don’t think that these are two words that we put together very often.  But why not? Maybe I am just reading too much of the Book of Job, but doesn’t the idea of a Holy Dark make perfect sense when trying to understand God?

So often when I think about God and the way he works I think BRIGHT and PASTEL colors.  But I am beginning to think that isn’t the way God always works.  Often He works in the Dark.  The dark is scary, we don’t understand the dark.  We bump into things in the dark and we can’t see past our noses (the reason I stubbed my toe last night).  And there are times that life seems very dark.  Where is God for the barren woman?  or the Woman who loses her child in birth?  Where is God when men go to war?  Where is God when all our plans are smashed on the rocks?  Life seems to be filled with a lot of dark.

This is where. for me, the idea of a Holy Dark comes in.  I have faith that behind the darkness there is a God who cares for us and is moving behind the scene.  Maybe instead of imagining it as a black darkness, we should think of Holy Dark as a deep blue, like the night sky as it gives away to dawn.  Personally I believe that the scriptures tell us we have a God who cares for us, who can guide us through the pitch, and a God who defends and pulls for us.

I don’t know what this all means.  What does it mean when we can’t see God moving? How does someone having cancer fit with this idea? I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers, but in my own moments of night, I will keep having faith that behind the darkness God is moving, so it’s not just a dark that envelopes me, it is a HOLY dark.