Reframing Darkness.
In 2008, an interesting book emerged like an abbreviated anecdote to society’s under-whelmed sense of hope entitled, “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” It’s a collection of 6-word memoirs to sum up lives:
“My reach always exceeds my grasp.”
“More than yesterday. Less than tomorrow.”
“Once was blind. Now I see.”
“Made a mess. Cleaned it up.”
“It was worth it, I think.”
It’s become an additive cliff-noting commentary for own observations:
I can make awkward look effortless.
Boba Tea is Lost On Me. (Seriously, It’s milky water with a choking hazard!)
Social Media is just Legalized Voyeurism.
General Election: Lesser Of Two Evils.
I Want More Better Call Saul
The title says it all - “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” That sounds like a modern anthem of once-hopeful, institutionally-skeptical climate. The hope has given way to deconstruction causing even the most earnest Christian to wonder: Where’s God when the world feels more broken than whole? More stuck than growing? More darkened than enlightened?
There are no dreams without darkness. It’s surprising to think, before the creation of the world, God pre-existed in darkness. The first act of creation was creating light from darkness. Modern thinking views darkness as evil, bad, uncertain, and to be avoided. Yet God’s native soil was in darkness?!?!
Darkness is a place of germination? Seeds grow from darkness. From the darkness of isolation and solitude, we imagine what’s possible. It’s like needing to get out from the city lights to rural roads to really see the stars.
Darkness is where roots run deep. That’s the paradox. The nutrients are in the dark roots. We don’t get the growth, fruit, blossoms, or canopy of shade without deepening roots in dark places.
Darkness is a place mystery - not something to be solved, but savored, like a return to child-like awe and wonder.
Whether you have a broken dream, great idea, unmet expectation, God has a Middle Name. He is Immanuel, God WITH Us. As David exclaims, “Where can I go from your presence or flee from your Spirit?” (Ps.139) Where you go, He’s with…in the hard and the good, certain and uncertain, open and closed doors.
God creates in the darkness. In Genesis, He makes order out of the chaos. What is void and without form takes shape. In a similar way, vocation informs one’s “sent-ness” in the world to contribute, order, and create. Like God, it’s what Christians innovate, design, build, raise, illustrate, advocate, heal, and organize in the world that reveals what God is like. There’s no secular or sacred job.
God’s dream is that a kingdom would grow out of the darkness. Identity reveals likeness. As “dual citizens” of heaven and earth, we’re entrusted with God’s dream for the renewal of God’s garden called earth! Salvation is less about going to heaven when we die and more about the return of the King. When we talk about the kingdom of God, we’re talking about renewed creation. The one we know as normal is, well, “Not Quite What God Had Planned.”
