Groping in the Darkness
They are groping along the wall. They don’t know where they are or where they are going. And worse, they don’t even know what they should be looking for.
Groping in the Darkness
Have you ever been somewhere so dark that you couldn’t see where you were going?
I remember the night we move into our new house. When we turned out the lights that night, it was so dark that it was crazy. I couldn’t even see the walls. I didn’t know where anything was so I had to reach out with my hands, hoping to find something—anything—that would guide me.
I was lost in my own home.
Isaiah describes humanity as living like that in spiritual darkness.
Isaiah 59:9–10:
“We hope for light, and behold, darkness, for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope along the wall like blind men. We grope like those who have no eyes…”
That is powerful. They are groping along the wall. They don’t know where they are or where they are going. And worse, they don’t even know what they should be looking for.
About 2400 years ago, Plato imagined a people who had spent their entire lives in a cave. All they could see were shadows on a wall in front of them. Those shadows were all they had ever known, and they thought that was what the world was really like.
Imagine living your entire life believing shadows were the real world. Their only hope for reality was for a light to reveal what the darkness distorted and hid.
Humanity has always searched for something more. We want meaning, purpose and fulfillment. We try one thing after another, hoping that perhaps this will finally give us what we’re looking for.
But what if the problem is that we don’t really know what we’re looking for? Remember the cane people? They had no idea that light even existed or what it could do to change their lives.
What if we have been living among shadows for so long that we have mistaken them for reality? Look at what Isaiah 5:20 tells us about spiritual darkness and light:
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness…”
That’s what spiritual darkness can do. It doesn’t just hide the truth. It can distort our understanding of truth. We can become so accustomed to darkness that we begin calling the darkness light.
Does that sound like the world you live in today? Then you might want to read tomorrow’s message.
