In the Desert of Despair...

In recent times, life has been relatively smooth. It has been a long time since I have been depressed, sad or troubled to the point of despair. Yes, there have been tense moments in which I have been overcome by worry and anxiety, but nothing that would make me weep in anguish. I thanked God for blessing me so much, and I felt that I thoroughly did not deserve it at all. During sharing in our SK Bible study yesterday, Yuet Pei asked us for a weather report on ourselves. I shared that I could see a rainbow, because everything had been so smooth, and God had given me such wonderful experiences throughout the week. Not long after I shared that, everything turned to darkness.

But when the time comes to enter the darkness in which we are naked and helpless and alone; in which we see the insufficiency of our greatest strength and the hollowness of our strongest virtues; in which we have nothing of our own to rely on, and nothing in our nature to support us, and nothing in the world to guide us or give us light – then we find out whether or not we live by faith.

It is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed or devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find true liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure. ~ Thomas Merton, The New Seeds of Contemplation