The company of God’s Presence in the numb night of grief

Photo by Josh Adamski on Unsplash

SOMETHING is common in the experience of those who have been broken by a pain that rips their lives to shreds. God’s Presence.

A situation that pushes us too far into the realm of inner destruction makes us reach out, and in the reaching out we’re helped in ways we could not have imagined.

I can speak in these terms for two reasons. I’ve experienced it once if not a dozen times. (More actually.) That’s the first reason. The second is the people God has brought into my sphere — some who will read this — so many of them have spoken, too, of these secret hidden realities.

It seems God wants these realities to remain elusive. I find words hard to come by to explain these things in real and rational terms that are credible — words for experiences that few have — not a select few — experiences chosen for any who would capitulate.

See, we ordinarily won’t allow ourselves to be crushed.

So when life does it to us, and we find we have no recourse to remedy for denial, brutality or escape, we find ourselves in uncharted territory. Too broken not to need to be rebuilt.

Suddenly we’re in a place where there is only one thing left. Stripped bare of all things other than the experience of our existence, we reach out to the Creator. He says, “Finally!” “Son/daughter, come to Me and find your rest in Me, because you know I know your pain.”

Suddenly He who is the Hero of our faith, becomes real and living in that moment. That moment we’re met! And life can never go backwards from there. We can certainly suffer greater things, but our knowledge of the reality of God’s Presence can never again be denied.

We can praise God for the numb night of grief that cast our souls to oblivion. That is the night when, with nothing left, we reached out and met God.