When It’s Got You?
Saturday, June 7, 2025
The Darkness Steals Everything Away?
No One Sees Much
In Our Dark
Small
Worlds.
Second Chronicles 20:5-6
Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said, “O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you.
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Luke 4:29-30
They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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Jehoshaphat cries to God, knowing that no one can stand in the way of God doing what God wishes to do. So save me, he cries.
The people, enraged by Jesus’ claims to be somebody, drive him out of town to a cliff and …
Well Jesus is God so he simply walks through the middle of the angry mob, and goes on his way … to bring God’s Word to people who will receive him.
In an episode of West Wing, Josh has been shot in the chest. Only surgery that lasts all night saves his life. He relives the trauma, over and over again, triggered by … music of all things. He’s out of control, angry, yelling, hurting himself breaking a window … all while he is unaware of his real surroundings and the memories replay in his mind as if real … again.
A counsellor comes, talks him through his experiences. Gets him to admit what is happening to him. Session done. Josh is not healed, but able to start healing.
Leo waits outside the session for him. Tells him a story:
There was a guy walking down the street who fell into a hole with sides so steep he couldn’t get out. The guy cried for help. A doctor walked by and heard his cries. The doc wrote a prescription and through it down the hole. The guy kept crying for help. A priest walked by and heard his cries. He wrote a prayer and tossed it down the hole. The guy kept crying for help. A friend came by and the guy cried to his friend to help him. The friend jumped down in the hole. The guy said to his friend, ‘that was really stupid. Now we’re both stuck down here.’ The friend responded, ‘it’s ok, I’ve been down here before and I know a way out.’
Leo, the recovering alcoholic, says to Josh, ‘As long as I have a job, you will have a job.’ Then he sends him off to the hospital to get his hand looked at. Josh cut it by breaking a window during one of his PTSD episodes.
Trouble is, there’s lots of people caught in dark holes.
They all could say:
I’ve been crying. I’m not even sure where this hole is. I’ve had prescriptions thrown down on me, and more than a few prayers. Many have yelled at me to stop crying. I’ve been called all sorts of things. I’ve had everything taken from me. I’m still in this hole. I don’t cry for help anymore. I try hard to pretend I’m not really in a deep dark hole alone. I work hard to stay alive. I try to help other people but I don’t trust many people at all. Mostly I cry quietly to myself. Sometimes I think that God is here with me in the darkness. It seems to make it less painful. I still cry. It’s still dark.
Who is going to jump down with all of them, in all of the deep, dark holes the world has?
Who is going to be Jesus, walking with them in the dark, showing them the way out of the darkness, the way to walk through the angry mobs to freedom, to the people who also want to walk in the light?
Who is going to even notice, when they are too tired to cry for help any more?
And who is going to help all those who walk by those holes, not noticing, not caring, not seeing beyond their own small darkened worlds of misery?
Lord, you know no one can stand against you, not even the Devil of darkness.
Save us all.
Send someone to lead us out,
Someone whose been here before.
Give us Light.