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Dancing In The Dark

Jesus did a lot of teaching on the topic of light and darkness, and was introduced hundreds of years before his birth as a great light. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. For those who lived in a land of deep shadows— light! (Is 2:7) I think he would have loved the story I read this week about a time when Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago was under attack.

Senior pastor, Rev. Otis Moss says that they were receiving dozens of death threats every week. “We’re going to kill you.” “We’re going to bomb your church.” At the time he was a new preacher and a young father who was, frankly, terrified. The situation was dire.

One night he was awakened by a noise in the house, and with trepidation he got up to see what was causing it. He peeked into his daughter’s room, and this is his description of what he saw:

“There was my daughter Makayla dancing in the darkness—just spinning around, saying, ‘Look at me, Daddy.’”

I said, “Makayla, you need to go to bed. It is 3 am. You need to get back in bed.”

But she said, “No, look at me, Daddy. Look at me.” And she was spinning, barrettes going back and forth, pigtails going back and forth. I was getting huffy and puffy wanting her to go back to bed, but then God spoke to me.

“Look at your daughter! She’s dancing in the dark. The darkness is all around her but it’s not in her!”

Makayla reminded him that darkness may find its way to you, but it doesn’t have to find its way inside you.

Rev. Moss later wrote, “Instead of seeing Makayla as just another addition to the night’s problems, I glimpsed her as a fellow traveler. Like her frightened father, this six-year-old fellow sojourner was awake in the night. Even so, there was a difference.

“I was caught in a cycle of worry and anger. I was not just walking a dark path; I had let the darkness inside of me. Evil always seeks to obscure the light, because once it has you living in darkness, that which should not be painful becomes so. What we forget, faithwise, in our fear—what I was forgetting that night in my daughter’s room—is that even in the darkest night, when we see no light at all, the light is still there.

“The stars still shine above us, no matter… how thick the clouds above our heads. What we need in the darkest nights is to keep walking along the path until we can see the stars again. Makayla was just a child, but on this night, she had moved ahead of me on that path.”

Rev Moss’ story came to me at a time when it seems that we once again “live in a land of deep shadows.” There is real evil swirling around the churches and those who seek to spread the gospel. Maybe that’s why I cling to the visual of little Makayla twirling and dancing, celebrating the light that lives inside her and completely unbothered by the darkness around her.

Seeing his daughter dance inspired Rev. Moss to share this message with his community:

“Sunday, I told the congregation that we must meet the threats in our lives. We must fight for justice, for our safety, and for the right to live in a world where we can thrive. But even in the darkness of midnight we can maintain a connection to the light. When we cannot survive in darkness by using the visual tool of sight, we still have internal tools of memory to remind us of our terrain. Until dawn comes, we need more than the determination to fight for justice. We need love to keep us from getting lost in distraction, love to keep us from falling into despair, love to help us restore ourselves, and get back into harmony with ourselves, so we can last through that dark night.”

“Dance,” he urged them. “Dance in the dark!”

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