I think grief is a lot like a cave.
They say the “dark zone” inside a cave is one of the darkest places on earth.
While people have successfully lived in the entrance of caves for millennia, something changes once you get about 165 feet inside. You’ve reached the dark zone, where the darkness is so pervasive, it confuses your senses. Suddenly, you become disoriented and can’t find your way back. You lose all sense of time, distance and direction. Your thought processes begin to change. After a while, you start hallucinating. Eventually, hopelessness will set in. You may even go mad.
Such is profound grief.
At first, everything is hazy, until your eyes adjust to the change. It’s cold and damp and uncomfortable, but there are others there with you. People with food and blankets and flashlights and conversation. They keep you sane.
However, at some point, you are pulled deeper in. Down into the cave. Down into perpetual darkness. Down into despair. And you are on your own. It is there where you find yourself with questions that have no answers. So, you either wander around in utter darkness, feeling for an escape or you succumb to the shadow and settle in, resigning yourself to live out your days in hopeless depression.
In Scripture, we read that Elijah and David both met with God in a cave.
No matter how long you’ve known, loved and served the Lord, you are susceptible to dark zone seasons. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the Light of the World can—and will—meet you there!
My preference would be the Elijah way. After God fed him and allowed him to rest, He called the prophet out. “Why are you here?” And in the entrance of a cave, the Lord showed Elijah that He doesn’t always need to work in spectacular ways. Sometimes, He uses a still, small voice to lead us out of the darkness and into His glorious light.
Yet, God doesn’t always call us out. Sometimes, He comes into the darkness with us and stays a while. David was God’s chosen king, on the run from Saul, hiding in the Cave of Adullam. This Psalm of Lament was written from the depths of that cave:
“I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me. Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. I cry to you, Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.’ Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.”
(Psalms 142:1-7)
And how does God answer? He shows David (and us) that one doesn’t necessarily need freedom from trouble in order to walk in his calling. While David was yet hiding in the cave, God sent him 400 hurting people to shepherd. Instead of calling David out, God used his cave as training ground. He taught David how to lead with compassion and humility…and He taught 400 disgruntled men to be mighty men of valor.
And only when the learning was done was David allowed to graduate from the cave to the castle.
Oh, friends, I know it gets mighty dark in here—this cave of grief. May I remind you that our God specializes in resurrecting things from caves?
Like Elijah and David.
Like Lazarus.
Like Jesus.
And He wants to do the same for you and me.
Did you know that even in the dark zone of a cave, where no photosynthesis occurs, a microbe can grow?
Keep looking for the Light, cave dwellers, for it is in the dark zone of discouragement, where there seems to be no hope, that faith can grow.
