Nights & Days of Doubt
“I would that my heart was ever strong, O Lord,
my faith always firm and unwavering,
my thoughts unclouded,
my devotion sincere,
my vision clear.
I would that I dwelt always in that state
wherein my belief, my hope, my confidence,
were rooted and certain.
I would that I remain in those seasons
when assailing storms seem only
to make faith stronger, proving your presence,
your provenance.
But it is not always so.
There are those other moments,
as now,
when I cannot sense you near, cannot hear you, see you, touch you - times
when fear or depression or frustration
overwhelm,
and I find no help or consolation,
when the seawalls of my faith crumble
and give way to inrushing tides of doubt.
Have I believed in vain?
Are your words true?
They seem so distant to me now.
Is your presence real?
I cannot feel it.
Do you love me?
Or are you indifferent to my grief?
Under weight of such darkness,
how can I remember the sunlight of your love
as anything more than a child's dream?
Under weight of such doubt,
how can I still proclaim to my heart
with certainty that you are real?
And so, Jesus, I do now the only thing
I know to do.
Here I drag my heavy heart again
into this cleared and desolate space,
to see if you will meet me in my place of doubt,
even as you mercifully met your servant
Thomas in his uncertainty, even as you once
acted in compassionate response to
a fearful father who desperately pleaded:
‘I believe, Lord. Help me with my unbelief!’
For where else but to you might I flee
with my doubts? You alone have the
words of eternal life.
This I know to be true, my Lord and my God:
You are not in the least angered
by my doubts and my questions,
for they have often been the very things
that lead me to press closer in to you,
seeking the comfort of your presence,
seeking to understand the roots of
my own confusion.
So also use these present doubts
for your purposes, O Lord.
I offer them to you.
Even as the patriarch Job
made of his pain and confusion a petition;
even as the psalmists again and again
carried their cries, their questions, their laments
to you; so would I be driven by my doubts
to despair of my own strength and knowledge
and righteousness and control,
and instead to seek your face, knowing that
when I plead for proof,
what I most need is your presence.
In your presence I can offer my questions,
knowing you are never
threatened by my uncertainties.
They do not change your truth.
My doubts cannot unseat your promises.
You are a rock, O Christ,
and your truth is a bulwark
that I might dash myself against,
until my strength is spent
and I collapse at last in despair,
only then to feel the tenderness of your embrace as you stoop to gather me to yourself,
drawing me to your breast
and cradling me there,
where I find I am held again by a love
that even my doubts
cannot undo.
O Lord, how many times have you graciously
led me through doubt into deeper faith?
Do so again, my Lord and my God!
Even now. Do so again!
You alone are strong enough
to carry the weight of my troubled thoughts,
even as you alone are strong enough to bear
the burden of my sin and my guilt and my
shame, my wounds and my brokenness.
O Christ, let my doubts never compel me to
hide my heart from you. Let them rather arise as
questions to begin holy conversations.
Invert these doubts, turning them to invitations
to be present, to be honest, to seek you, to cry
out to you, to bring my heart fully into the
struggle rather than to seek to numb it.
Let my doubts become invitations to wrestle
with you through such dark nights of the soul –
as Jacob wrestled with the Angel – until the day
breaks anew and I am fresh wounded by your
love and resting in the blessing of peace again in
your presence.
Now O Lord may the end result of my doubt
be a more precious and hard-wrung faith,
resilient as the Methuselah tree,
and hope more present and evergreen,
and a more tender and active mercy
extended to others in their own seasons
of doubting.
So help me, my Lord and my God.
I have no consolation but you.
Meet me now in this eclipse-shadow
of my doubt. Lead me again into your light.
Amen.”
- EVERY moment HOLY (VOL I)