Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night

by Barbara Brown Taylor

The darkness that dominates this story has nothing to do with what time of day it is. It has nothing to do with the position of the planets in the sky or the rods and cones in people’s eyes. It is an entirely unnatural darkness—both dangerous and divine—that contains the presence of the God before whom there are no others. It is so different from what other Hebrew words mean when they say “dark” that it has its own word in the Bible: araphel, reserved for God’s exclusive use. This thick darkness reveals the divine presence even while obscuring it, the same way the brightness of God’s glory does. Both are signs of God’s mercy, since ordinary human beings are not equipped to survive direct contact with the divine, in the dark or in the light.