I AM NOT really sure about what it means to love God, but I do know what it means to be loved by God; and while God’s love for me is no guarantee against struggles, despair, or suicidal thoughts, it gives me the strength to take the next step. Psalm 139 has become one of my favorite statements about God’s love for me and presence in my life.
The psalmist proclaims, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me; even the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:11-12). I am reminded by this proclamation that God is the ultimate reconciler of the contradictions of life. For even in the darkness God stands at the center and becomes as the light.
Because I am alive today I know that God has stood at the center of my despair and darkness and that out of that presence my will to continue was born. I am aware that I must simply be present to the power and love that have kept me from suicide, and that at the very core of my deepest despair or hottest rage stands God. I will be “held fast by his right hand” because there is no place that I can go either inwardly or outwardly where God is not already present. My hope is further undergirded by the knowledge that the contradictions of life in general and my life in particular are never final.
This article originally appeared in the April 1984 issue of Sojourners. Read the full article in the archives.
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