The Dark Night Of The Soul

By Justin Farley

In the darkest night of the soul,
The bleakest veil of blackness
Is pulled down over the sky.
You look out with piercing gazes,
But the Lord hides himself from your eyes.

Doubts well up inside you like cumbersome tears,
Suffering over the meaning of it all
And bound by your deepest fears.
You cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
But your words don’t reach his ears.

And each morning you rise hopeful
That the Son will rise along the eastern sky.
But another day passes, your bitter “whys” festering
In the cold, damp darkness.

But to have a dark night
One must have first had a bright day.
We lay in the midst of solitude
Because we recognize we weren’t always alone.

What we breathe our numbered breaths into
Leaves us vulnerable and open to attack
Because our life’s meaning hangs by a thread
And is defined by the object of our heart’s desire.

And during those numbered days,
When all hope has been vacuumed from the soul,
The strength to carry on is a burden few understand.
But you push on knowing God is there,
Even when he can’t be felt.

Then, when that dawn comes,
It’s too beautiful to describe
And harder to fathom –
For faith flows freely once again.

The captain of your heart and soul
Never jumped ship and abandoned you,
But let you steer for awhile
So you’d come to appreciate
And depend on his presence all the more.

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