‘Even the darkness is not dark to you’ – that’s a line from the Psalms. It catches King David in one of his poetic moments. If you’ve read about him in the Bible (the book of 1 Samuel, starting around chapter 16) then you’ll know that he knew a thing or two about darkness. Yes, literal darkness, like when he kept watch over the sheep at night, or the time when he was on the run and had to hide in a cave.

More to the point, he knew that deeper darkness of the soul, the kind you can’t fix by turning the lights on. David knew grief and guilt, and the shame of terrible mistakes. He had taken lives and lost friends, and lived with the scars of war. His own family was a mess of abuse and betrayal, and there are some seriously ugly chapters to his story.

To God, there are no dark places, says David. That means we have nowhere to hide, but it also means we have nowhere to get lost. There are no Godless places, no God-forsaken people, no situations so dark and twisted that God can’t possibly be there.

That’s an important thing to know when we feel that soul darkness creeping in, in our own lives or in our community. God sees. God knows. God has no dark side. So don’t be afraid.