WE ARE LIVING in dark times. A perfectly timed and distinctive new devotional, Darkness is as Light, wrestles with the dark, and from its many entries emerges a clear chronicle of the real power and meaning of God’s grace for us even—especially—in the dark.
The book consists of nine sections of eight entries each, beginning with a poem by Tennessee poet Allison Boyd Justus. Meditations by 22 authors are based on scriptural texts and grouped by theme: provision, sweetness, healing, death, balm, help, trial, consolation, and closeness. Graphic artist David Moses created striking cover art and illustrations for each section.
These are self-consciously women’s words based on women’s experiences. In her introduction, publisher and editor Summer Kinard draws connections from these modern meditations to ancient women mystics and a kind of Gothic spiritual ethos. There are occasional visions recounted in these pages, and a miracle or two, but mainly we see the range of women’s lived experiences, met every step of the way by grace. The grace of Christ shared with shunned St. Photine, the woman at the well. Ravages of bipolar disorder. Sexual abuse. Food insecurity, homelessness, inability to pay the rent. Leaving an abusive spouse. Caretaking for a chronically ill spouse. Sheltering from an abusive parent. Loss of a child. Unexpected surgeries. The exhaustion of mothering five young children.
But this collection is not a downer—far from it. Each entry sings with one theme: Christ is present. And it is this present God we can trust to sustain us, draw us closer, and sanctify us, no matter what.
The volume does bring tears—of recognition, shared sorrow, and joy. It is best to use as intended, reading only one entry per day, but it is so inviting that the reader wants to spend more time in the presence of these women, learning from their hard-won wisdom. Readers from Protestant traditions might find some of the language and spirituality—drawing on traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy—new to them, but the devotional will be welcomed by all readers seeking to deepen their knowledge of Christ and understood by anyone who has ever been subjected to the confusion of darkness and suffering.
Stasia Braswell’s entry on Matthew 28:1 draws together many of the separate threads throughout the volume as she meditates on hope. “Hope is not a subjective experience, but a crown of martyrdom, an orientation toward truth and beauty that chooses Christ and Christ again,” Braswell writes. “Even when there is every indication that I have been abandoned, hope is an action, a ritual, a process. It is never a feeling, but a choice. Hope is a patient endurance of emotion, of grief and suffering and failure. Hope is repentance. Turning back, getting up, and choosing Christ. Even when I am blind and stumbling, when God feels distant and silent: Christ is harrowing and hallowing the grave.”
We desperately need this kind of hope now, to light our way in this present darkness and draw us through to the light, that we may share the light of God’s boundless grace with all those around us.
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