Afraid In the Dark

When Kayla was in middle school, they did a fall festival fund raiser and its biggest draw was the haunted house they’d create. In a week, they turned a portable classroom building into several, narrow halls of spookiness. I helped build and decorate for the event, so I knew the ins and outs of each hall, the themes for each, and the scary effects that might give some kids the heebie-jeebies; but I couldn’t walk through it at night. Even though I knew what was there, walking through it in the dark just made it more frightening and unbearable.

There’s a saying, “Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light.” God proves Himself to us every day, when we wake up, when the sun comes out, when the wind blows, when we breathe the air. We know these things to be truth; we’ve witnessed His faithfulness in many areas of our lives and we’ve felt His mercy when we’ve not deserved it. But sometimes, when we get in a dark place, where we can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, and everything seems hopeless, we begin to doubt that God exists or cares about us. We let worry and fear overcome us, we lose sight of all the good things we’ve learned about our Father in heaven.

I should not have been afraid of that haunted house, because I’d seen in the daytime where each “BOO!” was coming from, I’d heard every creaky sound that would be played, and that all of it was just props and lights. You can’t trust the feelings you face when you’re in the dark, because that is Satan’s domain and he is the best-selling author of lies. When we get to a scary place in life, we need to remember all the good and positive things God has shown us in the light, so we don’t have to be afraid in the dark.