Awakening in Darknenss

     This morning a group that I am a part of had to be cancelled due to so much illness.  My daughter is not well and all three of her children are sick.  One friend just fell down the steps in a rush - in fact has done that more than once recently.  Another friend just lost her mother after a long illness.  I too have gone through a few dark days sampling various viruses.  When I am sick, other dark areas in my life are revealed to me.  Maybe I am slowed down enough to see them. 
     I do not believe that God strikes us with illness or brings on calamity but I do believe that sometimes, that is the only time that we will really listen.  We like to believe that we have all in control.  Isaiah is made ready for God by having his lips touched by a burning coal.  John Collins, the author of EFM's first year text wonders, "is the human condition only  purified by the painful and radical remedy of burning?"  Think about your own life.  What periods of your life in looking back have caused you to grow spiritually?  For me and most people that I know - it is the dark times. 
     Sometimes, just as many of our biblical friends, I want to hear simply what I want to hear.  I think that I am hearing God when it is really my own ego talking.  The hard and beautiful messages of God have only sunk in when I am perhaps laid out sick, going through grief, experiencing some great disappointment, or depression has hit.  Those are the times when I am faced with myself.  I am out of control and I can only turn to God. 
     If illness or some other darkness has visited you recently, I challenge you to welcome it.  Then listen, watch, and trust that the God of life is there whispering.  Perhaps transformation is knocking.