The photo of the cross is from the island of Iona in Scotland.  I’ve been there three times, the last being for three months in 2015.  I went after resigning my position as pastor in the Lutheran Church.  I went seeking  a lot of God and maybe a bit of myself. Many of the people I met there were doing the same.  Like me they had been beaten down, battered and bruised by the storms of life, lost loves and disillusionment with the divine—or at least the church.  Iona was a respite for religious refugees.  But it was also a place where new introductions were made, not only to others from around the world, but to the One who had created it.  Some found God there. I thought that I had.  But that’s not the case.

I found God in the darkness.  Or maybe He found me there.  It was during the five years prior to Iona when I was depressed and drowning, simply striving to stay afloat, that I found God.  Most of the time I didn’t recognize Him. He came to me like He did to Elijah, in a still small voice.  He was there with me standing in the shadows, sometimes in the valley of death itself.  At times He was close, closer to me than I was to my Self. At other times He was standing at a distance, so far I couldn’t see Him.

But always He was there.

In retrospect I’m not surprised.  There’s ample evidence in the Bible for this type of activity.  He is with Joseph in prison and Jonah in the belly of the whale.  He’s with Jacob at night—twice in fact—before he meets his brother Esau.  He’s with Nicodemus at night, and with a few of His followers in the garden of Gethsamenee, and with the disciples behind locked doors.  God is in the darkness.  I believe He does His best work there.  At least He did with me.

I was taught to believe that God is found in the Bible, or in the church, or in “holy” men and women, or in sacred places.  In other words in those things that are bathed in light.  Certainly I have gotten glimpses of God there.  But the most intimate communion with Him has come during the descent into that dark place, where I couldn’t see anything clearly, but where He saw me.