When Darkness Descends

There are seasons in every missionary’s time overseas where the darkness is close at hand. Early on, before we knew the language of the Yembiyembi, it felt like we were going to funerals every week. Our financial support was low and there were regular bouts of malaria and other new diseases that we were trying to stay on top of. I remember wrestling with my motivations for being there. Malaria does funny things to the mind, and what was once a clear calling would drive me to despair in this jungle swamp so far from home. But a friend across the mountains, a fellow missionary, sent me an email of encouragement, and through my time in the Word, slowly the light began to filter through and I was pulled out inch by inch from that horrible state of mind.

Recently Radius had its biennial board/staff retreat and our speaker focused on the topic of encouragement. Christians are of all people most hopeful, as our speaker pointed out: we know the source of all encouragement, we know what the end of all things will look like, and most of all, we believe the gospel to be true. He chose for his text 1 Thessalonians 5:9–11:

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,  who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

Our speaker, my dear friend Ed Moore, did an excellent job of reminding us of the root of encouragement for those who are in Christ. The truth is that we are not destined for wrath; the Son stands with us when we are viewed by the Father. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; they are covered in Christ. All debts are paid and my standing before the great Judge is the standing that Christ merited for perfect obedience. Oh, for these great truths to be ever before us, and for friends that remind us of them when the darkness descends!

When I think of darkness—brutal, soul-searching, despairing-of-life darkness—I am reminded of Adoniram Judson.

In May of 1824, when the Anglo-Burmese War was just beginning, Judson was accused of being a spy and was thrown into a Burmese prison nicknamed the “death prison.” At night, the jailers would take a long bamboo pole and pass it horizontally between the fettered legs of the prisoners, then hoist the pole up until only the prisoners' shoulders and head rested on the ground with their legs elevated. Their feet were already in fetters, so they were essentially suspended in an inverted and helpless position through the night. Judson survived and would eventually be the key translator and diplomat in the peace negotiations.

He and his wife, Ann, and daughter Maria, had miraculously survived the conflict, and upon his release their hope was bright. But in God’s providence Ann would live only eleven months more before cerebral meningitis took her, and then six months later, to the day, his only living child Maria would be taken as well. He had lost his entire family.

Judson would dig his own grave and contemplate his culpability in Ann’s death and grapple with the growing temptation to take his own life. But three things happened. First, news arrived that his brother had repented and been saved before he died. This cheered him, and he “could only cry tears of joy.” He began taking long trips into the jungle to read his Bible, reflect, and pray, and he moved his little dwelling closer to the missionary compound. As he drew closer, the team of missionaries there pulled him in, and dear Mrs. Wade would send him plates of food to encourage him when he didn’t want to be with them. Slowly he gained weight, he came back to those who knew him, and the darkness began to lift.

Christians are people of covenant and community. Our God has solemnly bound himself to us with promises and consequences, and to live as a Christian is never a solitary spiritual experience. We belong to God through the gospel and we belong to each other through the church. It’s through these two forces that the Lord stabilizes us when trials are fierce.

Samuel Rutherford, writing from his own exile and suffering in Aberdeen, put it well: “Christ and His cross are not separable in this life; but in heaven Christ comes to you without the cross.” The cross, borne most faithfully in community, is the shape of the Christian life on this side of glory—and the brotherhood around us is God’s appointed means of helping us carry it.

Peter would write to the elect exiles around the known world to be on guard against the enemy of their souls “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” But Peter does not offer them an escape; he calls them to resist when the fire of suffering is brutally hot. “Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

It’s through the knowledge that our fellow Christians around the world are going through the same sufferings that we find hope. But we also find hope in the eternal home that awaits us. When we suffer, we are reminded that it is “a little while,” but the King Himself picks us up, reminds us who we are, gives us what we need to continue, and roots us deeper in Him for the rest of the journey. Suffering then does its good work, but only in view of eternity.

Judson would later marry Sarah Boardman, and they would have eleven wonderful years together. But her health began to fade in the fall of 1845, and so they, along with three of their children, boarded a ship bound for America to see if the warm ocean air would help heal her. As the ship rounded the tip of Africa, the Lord took her home. Judson was thrust back into despair, but his journal records in vivid detail the hope he clung to this time. “For a few days, in the solitude of my cabin, with my poor children crying around me, I could not help abandoning myself to heart-breaking sorrow. But the promise of the gospel came to my aid, and faith stretched her view to the bright world of eternal life and anticipated a happy meeting with those beloved beings whose bodies are moldering at Amhurst (Ann) and St. Helena (Sarah)”.

Through the gospel we have hope and encouragement for this short, often painful, pilgrimage of life. Through our fellow pilgrims we are most reminded of this hope. We know that until the King’s return all sons and daughters of Adam will die, but so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Let’s encourage each other with these words and look eagerly for the day when all things will be made new.