If
only I knew where to find him. (Job 23:3)
St.
John of the Cross, a 16th century Spanish mystic, wrote The Dark Night of the Soul to describe
the painful and lonely journey of an individual seeking spiritual maturity.
John wrote his treatise while imprisoned by his own monastic brothers for his
attempts to reform the order. It symbolizes a spiritual crisis in which God
seems far off and unreachable.
Watchman
Nee, the Chinese church planter who died in 1972 after twenty years in prison,
wrote about the brokenness of the outer man in The Release of the Spirit. He talked about how God uses struggles
and hardships in our lives to break the shell (the personality or the soul)
that binds the inner man (the spirit). Nee and John could have been reading
each other’s emails.
We
talk about times when God seems to be hiding and our prayers bounce off the
ceiling, times we cry out to God but get no answer. That’s what Job was
experiencing. He was seeking, but God was nowhere to be found.
My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words
of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night,
and am not silent (Psalm
22:1,2).
It
seems that Christ also experienced the dark night of the soul.
Have
your cries for God ever been answered only with silence?
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