The Story - Chapter 6

Sometimes it feels like no matter how much faith we have, no matter how many promises we’ve heard, and no matter how many signs God has provided, we have moments where it is difficult trusting in God. We aren’t the first ones in history to feel this way...

In Chapter 6 of The Story, the Israelites seem to have trust issues. After spending many months walking in the wilderness, the Israelites were tired. They were frustrated. They were thirsty. They were starting to have doubts, not just about their present situation, but about their future. They were no longer trusting that God really was going to lead them to a new and better place.

Now I want to remind you these were the same people who were given manna and quail from heaven very recently (the quail story is one of my favorites to imagine; pages 72-73 in The Story). Yet, we read that the fear of the unknown future has overwhelmed the Israelites’ faith from the past to bring their journey forward into the wilderness – commanded by God no less – to a stop.

We encounter these moments in our lives – when our faith is overrun by fear – and life as we knew it stops. This time of dread, some short, other times longer, sometimes consists of an existential fear that God has abandoned us and God no longer can be a refuge for us. The Church fathers and mothers coined these times “Dark Nights of the Soul.”

These “Dark Nights” – times of no consolations, when our previous ideas about God become cloudy, and there seems to be no rest within the old structures of our faith – can and do happen to the faithful. We struggle when we are in the midst of a "Dark Night," yet it is through the stories of those who hold on can we begin to understand what these “Dark Nights” can be for us – not as punishment, but as purification and as grace. Look back at pages 77-78 in The Story. The people are crying again, this time for water. God provided yet again for His people, this time with water from a rock. At the end of the reading, we see Moses’ hope for the people by naming this miraculous place Meribah, “…where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and where he proved holy among them.”

The dread and fear the Israelites had in their Dark Night were as real as any we have today. They both are expressions of our insecurity in this earthly life; a realization that all that is “ours” can completely fail us. Yet for many of us, when we hold on through those “Dark Nights” of our life we realize the opportunity to trust all the more in God and his grace right now, regardless of what surrounds us.

That takes a deep and profound appreciation of what we are trusting in. And even then we can falter. Look at the Israelites. They’ve experienced an active God split the Red Sea in two, give them heavenly food, and lead them through the wilderness by cloud and lightening. And yet they still doubt God?! Does anyone else wonder how that is even possible? That proves to me we need to show ourselves and others much more grace and understanding than we do when our faith falls short.

So what, then, is it that we trust in? Or, a better question – who?

Yes, we will falter in following Jesus. That’s when many of us will find ourselves in those moments of Darkness. Those dark nights come when we trust in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

The opposite of cheap grace is costly grace; the grace and love found in the life and love of Jesus. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Christ. It comes to us as a word of forgiveness and encouragement to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a person to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him, even when we have to humble ourselves to persons we disagree, when we are obedient to unjust laws, yet are strong enough to stand up to them while showing the other dignity; when we die a death of embarrassment, of shame, of dishonor – and for some, a physical death – not suited for any of God’s created order. When we follow Jesus, the name above all names, we trust in that his life, death and resurrection can and does cover any darkness in our lives. There is nothing else in this world can we trust in more.  

Our journey of faith will inevitably bring us to moments where trust seems difficult and darkness feels overwhelming, just as it did for the Israelites. Yet, through these "Dark Nights," we are given an opportunity to deepen our reliance on God, moving away from superficial faith and toward a profound trust in His grace and provision. Like the water from the rock in the wilderness, God's grace flows even in our most desperate moments, reminding us that we are not abandoned. When we embrace the costly grace of Jesus Christ, we find that His love and sacrifice are enough to sustain us through any challenge. The question we must ask ourselves is not whether the Lord is with us, but whether we are ready to trust fully in Him, even when the path is uncertain.