Every night is a time for the plants, flowers and buds to receive a shower of dew drops during the winter months! These dew drops protect the leaves and petals from the heat of the sun during the day. This gift to the plants come to them in the darkness of the night.
For us humans, darkness is symbolically a dry season of anxiety and uncertainty. As I listen to the stories of darkness in the lives of people, who go through the travails associated with the developmental dilemma they face about their children, I feel the burden they carry! The night is too long and they are heavy laden with fear and stress.
However, there are some who found the night to be redeeming and restorative. Two children from a family have been under our care for their special needs. Both of them have a similar disease which was genetically transmitted. The uncle of these children who came for a conversation to tell me how their father who took no responsibility for home or children and lived recklessly, is now a changed person and lives with his family and works nearby to support the family. Up until now it was the rest of the family who provided for the family. This gentleman was tearful while talking about his older brother who lived for almost ten years irresponsibly, but returned to his senses to take responsibility for his family. He told me that their 'night' was long and had to endure 'darkness' almost without hope!
I felt rejuvenated at the end of that conversation as this gentleman talked about the transition from darkness to hope even in the midst of two children suffering with an illness that has a down hill course.
Of late, I have been encouraged to look for rays of hope in darkness!
We can get entrapped in the darkness of the night or journey through darkness receiving the dew of the night. Even in the midst of an intensely disturbing darkness in our lives, the dew of hope accompanies us. In fact, it is not our resilience which sustains us, but the provisions we receive as dew, while journeying through the agony of loneliness or sense of anxiety!
Jesus of Nazareth had to face a dark hour in His life, when He was speaking to people in the temple. 'They rose up and cast Him out of the city and led Him to to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst He went His way' (luck.4:29-30).
Th darkness is not our destiny or is our home. We are to be travellers through darkness to 'go our way'. Darkness or despair or loss of hope or anxiety driven state is a snare or a trap that we can easily slip into out of fear or helplessness. But there is a way out, if we do not surrender to the trap in helplessness. The darkness is a formative experiences to lead us into the next season and phase in our lives.
The dew of the night sustains us during the dark seasons in olives.
What might be this dew!
At my work place I have been through a darkness for about three ears. I have had to go through some humiliating experiences! Looking back I wonder how I stayed without quitting. The dew of the darkness was an interior readiness which helped us to reorganise our work and upscale it to a new level of quality that the department was one of the two departments in the institution, which received a commendation during the recent NABH readiness inspection.
The night of darkness is always for a larger purpose! The dew of darkness is a symbol of the accompanying presence of a God, who stays with us in the journey through darkness!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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