all through night

I liked pretending that the god who lived in my head was real. 

When you worship a god you've made up, you can justify the way you worship yourself. The way you honour your own desires. 

I liked holding onto the god who lived in my head. I liked pretending that there was something real that I believed in, a reason to trust that there was meaning in it all. 

Because people and places and objects and thoughts and experiences and feelings, I'll confess -- I think I try conjure them up, like putting on a pair of 3D glasses and expecting them to create new dimensions in a world where they don't exist. In a world that isn't real.  

And I went away for two weeks, I think it was to maybe find the God I pretended to know. And I stepped into a darkness and I remained oblivious, and I pretended that I was finding God even though I couldn't even see that I was standing in darkness. 

I get angry a lot, sometimes this gets mistaken for passion, but the only passion that counts is a compassion that suffers with the people in the dark, & I couldn't even place the darkness. 


I've been home now, and at nighttime the darkness has become prevalent -- it's not hidden from me anymore. That's something about it, about the darkness, its greatest deceit -- darkness so easily hides from those in its presence. 

I have dreams and I can't be free and I don't know what's real, and I can't see, and I can't break away and I can't breathe, and I can't move. And then I wake up and I'm so scared, I'm terrified, and my heart is banging and my breathing is hard. My head is spinning, and I know that I have to move, to go forward and turn on the light, and the thought of stepping into the dark absolutely terrifies me -- but cowering with my face in the pilllow, I can't stop shaking. And I stand and I move forward, so afraid of what could be in the dark. My steps are so tentative and I push forward, into the darkness, and I fumble around, desperate to press into the Light. 

And I do, and light immediately breaks the dark. 

As soon as the light goes off, fear strangles me. Eventually, I fall to sleep. 


And I don't know where this darkness has come from, but I think of the past two weeks and the past twenty years and I remember where I've been and what I've seen, districts where men buy girls and karaoke bars are built with hidden tunnels leading to hotel rooms. 

I think of the darkness I stood in and was oblivious to, 
I remember the god I pretended existed, 


and this darkness that tore right into me, this darkness is not about me. We're a world in a hidden darkness, it's a darkness that we can't see and we can deny it, and we make our own mirages of light. 

And I'm not sure of anything, I'm not sure of anything at all,
but I'm desperate for the God who I haven't made up, 
I'm desperate for the God whose power exudes over everything, 
Who doesn't exist to be contained by anything. 

I'm desperate for the God who is so big that he rules over galaxies I will never see. I'm desperate for the God who isn't made of stone, for the God who isn't a blurry image buried in the back of my mind, for the God who doesn't want my religious sacrifice. 

I'm desperate for the God who we could only honour and never deserve. I'm desperate for the God who hates my made up religion and theoretical concepts about the Truth he penned out in his Word.  

I'm desperate to remain desperate. Because otherwise I'll keep playing pretend. It's too easy to be complacent. Complacency has no space for desperation. 

God-light streamed into the world, but we all ran for the darkness. We went for the darkness because we were not really interested in pleasing God. All of us who make a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hate God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is. John 3

 Do I really want to be free of all the illusions and mirages I've come to know so well? 
I can get by in them.
But it's dark. 
And it's grip is so tight. 

The real God made Light. 

Maybe light isn't so much about revealing things that you couldn't see,

but exposing as falsehood all the lies that the darkness claims to be true. 

Like light is the revelation of all the holy truth we don't even know darkness has hidden. 

Like the uncovering of the darkness is actually the unveiling of our freedom.

When we suddenly know that we're in the dark, we don't have to pretend we're in the light anymore. 

It's like the Spirit presses us forward, like now He can move us into the Light & we're not declaring the legitimacy of our own religion or denying the surrounding darkness. 

I don't want to pretend the darkness is light like I have been. Maybe this is why nothing is real.

Strange when you realize darkness is your home. When you get to stop pretending your god is God.
 
We can quit trying to decipher darkness. 

Now we'll see Light, because we'll all see this blaze of light burning down all this black, 

like a sky emptied of clouds,
stars making illumination all through night.