Dark Shadows to Light

“He’s finally here!” my son said. We’ve been waiting for my granddaughter Sarah to have her first baby. She was a eight days past her expected due date. I haven’t seen Sarah or the new baby yet, for they live too far away for that, but I can imagine the relief she has now that baby Gaius is here. All eight pounds seven ounces!

I don’t know about those of you who have had a baby, but I can still vividly remember each birth and delivery of my two children even though it was more than fifty years ago. Birth is the same process, regardless of the era. I often thought of Mary, the mother of Jesus who labored in a dim cave with only her husband in attendance.  There’s pain–lots of it. I remember how shocked I was at how painful it was. At the time, I wondered if I could survive it. And then knowing birth is imminent, and the relief of the doctor or nurse telling you it’s a boy or girl.

Sometimes we go through the deep pain of childbirth. But there’s other pain we endure during our lives on this earth. Some of you are in pain through a bad relationship and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Perhaps you’ve been told there’s nothing to be done about the frightful pain in your back or other extremity. Have you been told the cancer is back? Whatever reason we go through physical or emotional pain it is as being in “the shadow of death” and you wonder if you’ll get through it to the other side.

Often Psalm 23 is used at funerals but the passage that talks about “the shadow of  death” isn’t always about death, but the shadow. I read in a commentary that sheep don’t understand death, but they understand danger of walking into darkness. That is fear to them. The point of the verse is that they need not fear, for God is with them. The New Living Translation states in verse 4, Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. 

Whether we are walking in a dark valley of insecurity or pain, or even facing death, the psalmist states he isn’t afraid because God was with him. He’s with us too in our darkest valley and pain.

My mother had each us five children learn Psalm 23 when we were four years old. I remember those verses the best because they’ve been in my mind and heart for so many years. I remembered it when I feared my baby girl wouldn’t survive. I feared in times my marriage wouldn’t survive. The verse flowed through my mind when the phone call came in the middle of the night.

There are lesser fears that we all experience too. “Will I get to my meeting in time?” “Will I get this job?” “Will I survive this cancer?” “Can I stand this pain?”

I like it that we are promised He will be with us in the shadow.

A psalm of David.