"Darkness, darkness?. . . You can't handle darkness"

It was the first night or my annual retreat. A beautiful summer night beckoned to my soul. I lit a candle and headed for the prairie labyrinth. 

As soon as the gleaming yard light was out of sight, I began to wonder if this was a mistake.  The little tea candle seemed somehow dimmer than when I first lit it in the retreat center. An occasional little animal scurried away through the head high prairie grass on either side of the path.  Plus the poor spiders had worked so hard to spin those webs across the path in hopes of catching smaller prey than myself… apparently prey that lived about 5 feet off the ground so that the webs seemed a rude surprise that most often hit between my chin and my forehead.  Ick! 

 “It is an act of faith,” I kept telling myself. “God better appreciate this,” I pathetically whined to no one in particular. It was a long walk to the rock marking the center of the labyrinth. 

When I arrived I noticed a faint glow on the horizon. Bigger, bigger, brighter, brighter and bigger it got.   It was the just-past full moon.  What a beautiful sight.  It helped to focus me and soon I found myself deep in prayer.  But trepidation of the long dark walk back was never far from my mind. I prayed that God would somehow shorten that twisting and winding path between me and the retreat center.

Then my candle went out.  Only then did I realize that I had blown it out!  The little voice in me said, “An act of faith?  You ain’t seen nothin' yet” (Yes, in my mind God sometimes talks in clichés.)  “If you have faith you don’t need no stinkin’ candle.”

I sat perplexed by my own madness as the moon continued to rise and continued to shine brighter.  It took me a while to grasp what was happening. I started reciting all the light scriptures I could recall.  I sang all the light songs I could remember.  And I rose slowly and tentatively and began to walk the return path.  A very occasional solar landscaping light provided opportunities to stop and review some of the light scriptures I had recalled- and even think of a few more. 

I followed the darkness.  The moon shinned on the grasses on either side of the path, and as my eyes adjusted I realized that what I needed to do was keep stepping into the darkness, and every time I did, it turned out to be the path. “Thy word is a lamp”  “The people who walked in darkness”  “The darkness could not overcome it.”

I began to breathe a breath prayer- “O GOD, CREATOR AND SOURCE OF ALL LIGHT . . .  light the path before me” . . .  “O GOD, CREATOR AND SOURCE OF ALL LIGHT.  You are my light and my salvation” 

When the bright artificial yard-light of the retreat center so rudely brought me back to myself  and the prairie of north central Iowa, I stopped and prayed once more “Ain’t seen nothin’ yet?  God I still ain’t seen nothin’, but thank you for showing me anyway.”  And under the bright artificial light, I promptly walked off the path, the now damp switch-grass slapping me in the face.  That is when I realized, that was the one and only time that I had strayed from the path. . .  when I saw the artificial light and tried to take control of the journey myself.

In the darkness of night, or the brightness of day, God is the light of our lives.  God, let me walk the path you have set before me with more faith than fear, and more confidence than control, more trust than I usually have.