Abram’s Darkness
Abram got despondent, he doubted, and friends note too that Abram even got depressed. We read "As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him." (Genesis 15:12)
A thick and dreadful darkness! This was not just the darkness of nighttime. This was not just darkness because his eyes were closed. This was a thick and dreadful darkness. Dreadful means "terrifying".
Last year I went for a run one afternoon at about 4.30, and just before 5 I was running along Jubilee Road which overlooks a veld area, and as I looked across the veld there was this black bank of clouds covering the whole sky! Lightning popping up here and there. And slowly, slowly this dark cloud came towards me! I managed to get home just before the rain came. By 5 everything was dark almost like night.
Some of us have experienced that exact thing, emotionally, or spiritually. Darkness comes over us like that, and clouding everything.
The Reality of Spiritual Darkness
Abram slipped into a very scary place emotionally. And this is not uncommon in the Bible. Sometimes we think depression is sin. It's not. Self-pity is sin. But depression is not self-pity. It's a very different monster.
Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, was an amazing man of God. He preached many sermons and published many books, and pastored a great church in London. But Spurgeon struggled with depression. And he used to often preach about it, to encourage others who also struggled with it. In one lecture he said this: "Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light."
A darkness, a melancholy, a sadness coming over you is not strange. You're human. You're no angel.
Even Abram, Spurgeon, and many other great people of God have wrestled with this dark and difficult dilemma.
Even Jesus Experienced Dark Moments
In fact, remember how Jesus had a dark moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, crying out to God and sweating great big drops like blood? Remember how He cried out to God to take this cup away from Him? In a sense, Jesus' humanness was never more clearly revealed.
Being a Christian isn't about just having a smile on all the time. Sometimes darkness comes over us like it did Abram, and like it did Jesus.
When that happens, don't doubt your faith. Don't doubt God's love. You're human, and this means sometimes you will struggle. And God gets it.
