When my wife and I are sitting on the sofa in the evening, and she is talking, I will admit to you that sometimes I fall asleep. Not good. She is gracious. Not necessarily happy about it. But gracious.
I will also admit to you that when I practice meditative prayer, gazing on the beauty of the Lord (see previous post), my mind can wander. You too? Sometimes I fall asleep. So an ancient practice has been very helpful to me: centering prayer. When we practice centering prayer, we are first of all gracious to ourselves. We are human, our minds will wander, and we will sometimes fall asleep. God is also gracious. Don’t beat yourself up. Instead graciously, pushing away frustration or a sense of failure, wake up and recenter on God.
What practitioners of centering prayer suggest is that you use a word or phrase of Scripture to recenter, refocus on God. When I have been going through a season of life struggling with anxiety, I might choose the word “peace,” thinking about Philippians 4:6-7, how God promises the peace that passes understanding. Or I might just say the name, “Jesus.” Some people say the prayer of humility, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
But then there are those times when you’re not just struggling with a short attention span or falling asleep in prayer. Have you ever gone through a phase where it seems that God is far away, or maybe even totally gone? Christians through the ages have called this The Dark Night of the Soul. St. John of the Cross called it Spiritual Depression.
I think our normal human knee jerk reaction in the dark night of the soul is to want it to stop. We can distract ourselves away from having to face it. We can be very afraid of our doubts, our fears, our pain. Especially so when, during those times, we are crying out to God, but he is not responding. There are some, and maybe you have known them, who give up their faith in those dark moments.
Did you know Mother Theresa went through a dark night of the soul? While she experienced visions of Christ in her teens, she struggled with a dark night of the soul throughout most of her ministry. From her journal: “I am told God lives in me—and the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches me soul.”
Jesus in the Garden and on the cross experienced the dark night. Imagine what he was going through when he was on the cross? Denied, Betrayed, Arrested, Beaten, Falsely accused, Nailed to the cross, and God was silent. Jesus cries out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Some Christians believe that it was through this dark night of the soul that we experience transformation. Ask “what can I learn?” in the midst of the darkness.
One person writes, “During this dark night, God roots out our deepest attachments to sin and self, and the desolation that accompanies that rooting out is overwhelming and crushing. More than just a lack of consolation, this dark night plunges a soul into the abyss of darkness and nothingness, essentially revealing to us what we are without God and preparing us to not only to carry out crosses, but to love our crosses and carry them joyfully in union with Christ.”[1]
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in the dark night of the soul is the question “How do I pray?” In those times of spiritual depression, we are often at our least patient, and our minds can wander, totally lose interest, feel frustrated, and discouraged.
The key is to press on. In those dark moments, as in the good ones, it is so helpful to have a guide. I have found over the last three years that my spiritual director is a deeply helpful guide.
Finally, remember what Paul teaches in Romans 8:26-27, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”
There are also some helpful resources I would recommend, and we’ll talk about them in the next post.
[1] Stimpson, Emily Chapman. Quoted in Ed Cyzewski. 2017. Flee Be Silent Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace With God Through Contemplative Prayer. Self-published. Page 148.
Engaging Scripture 