Winter: Darkness My Closest Friend? Series

Spiritual Rhythm

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

The following sermon series is based on Mark Buchanan’s book, Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul. There are seasons or “cycles of the heart” that each of us either by our own choices or more often due to “chance happening to everyone” that we must go through in life. There will be times of “flourishing and fruitful, stark and dismal, cool and windy, and everything in between” (15). It is not from our “business,” the kind of service that tries to outperform others to “make one shine” that bears fruit. Human effort alone is always the dust’s feeble attempt to produce more than mere filthy rags! It is only by knowing and faithfully keeping in step with the Holy Spirit that we can produce the fruits talked about in Galatians of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22). If we invite the Man of all Seasons, the pioneer and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2), our sympathetic high priest Jesus (4:14-16) into the “season for every activity under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) then the eternity that God has placed in our hearts (3:11) will always be met with joy through the transformative power of His grace and mercy! The “seasons” in this sermon are not defined as birth, youth, middle and old age but instead as four distinct set of circumstances that believers inevitably face living in this fallen world that is not our home (Hebrews 13:14-16): winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Winter: Darkness my Closest Friend?

Of all the seasons winter is the most difficult one to endure. It is “bleak, and cold, and dark, and fruitless. It is a time of inactivity, unwelcomed brooding, more night than day. Most things are dead, or appear so,” (29) and worst of all it never seems to never end! It often represents a “dark night of soul” for contained within its cold, desperate, lonely drapery one finds the pain and anguish so unbearable that one wonders if one will ever feel pleasure again. It is during these kinds of tribulations that one often feels like either one has wandered too far from God to be found or God found one so despicable that He abandoned one to live the rest of one’s life in misery, never to see the Son shine again! It is in the deep, dark valleys of tribulations that we out of self-pity and utter foolishness wonder: “if God truly loved me then I would not be here” (29)! It is in our brokenness that we most often cry out with Solomon, “meaningless, meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 2), for if our attempts to be holy merely result in frustration, anguish, and unbearable pain then how can all of one’s life be worth living? When pain swallows up and blinds one to the “sunshine of pleasure” one once had then” ambition, accomplishment, aspiration, beauty, and courage become but a distant memory or worse, yet an antagonizing reembrace of what has been lost!

The greater the crucible of affliction the more likely blindless, sorrow, pain and self-pity sets in that is so intense that life seems not only meaningless, but darkness becomes our closest friend! Psalms 88 was written by the Sons of Korah that is so intense with agony and sorrow that the scholar Walter Brueggemann calls this Psalm, “an embarrassment to conventional faith” (33)! Let’s read the passage slowly and carefully for contained within it are some very raw emotions of one experiencing a dark night of the soul.

“LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you.

2 May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

3 I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death.

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.

8 You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;

9 my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

11 Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you.