"Finding Light in the Darkness" by Rector Chris Girata

Finding Light in the Darkness was published in the Katy Trail Weekly, "The Good Word" Column, September 10, 2021
Chris Girata is the Rector of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, TX.

As you might imagine, I like the Bible. I read it regularly, and sometimes I’m reminded of just how incredible some of the stories are. I came across one story last week of a miraculous healing. As the story goes, Jesus encounters a deaf man who had a speech impediment. The man’s friends begged Jesus to heal him, so Jesus “took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.”

When I was a child, I loved miracle stories like that. I loved the idea that God could heal in a moment, that wrong things could be made right. Those stories promised hope, as they do for so many. Yet too often, the point of those stories is missed because we focus on the wrong parts. When the world is a mess, we might be tempted to wish for a miracle. And if that miracle doesn’t come as we wished, we can lose hope, and stories like the one above can seem at best useless, and at worst, a horrible tease.

When the world is a mess, we might be tempted to wish for a miracle.

Trouble swirls all around us. Constant news of the pandemic, of Afghanistan and Haiti, and of wildfires and hurricanes fill our hearts and minds, not to mention the personal worries we all carry. I am so very aware of the exhaustion most of us are feeling. In that pain and uncertainty, we may encounter or recall miraculous stories and hope for our own miraculous healing. But far too often, it seems like our cries for help go unanswered.

It’s human nature to wrestle with the problem of pain in the world. Anyone paying attention to the world will naturally question why bad things happen, especially to people who don’t seem to deserve. We can struggle mightily to answer those profound questions, but the answer is often unsatisfying. I could tell you that God answers prayers, just not always the way we hope, but that’s confusing. I could tell you that hardships can deepen our faith, but that’s frustrating. I could tell you that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, but if that were true, we wouldn’t need God.

We may not be able to solve the problems of our world, either big or small, but we can hold each other through the pain.

Try as we might, pain is a part of life. We can try to solve the problem of pain, but any solution will fall short of removing the heartbreaks we experience. Instead, I invite you to find hope, not a solution. Hope can be found in many surprising ways, but one certain way to find hope is in one another. That Jesus healed the man of his deafness is not the most important part of the story. Rather, that the deaf man had friends who loved him enough to keep hope alive is most important. We may not be able to solve the problems of our world, either big or small, but we can hold each other through the pain. We can walk with one another through hard moments, loving one another just as God loves us.

Our world is broken, and we cannot fix what is broken on our own. But when we walk with one another, we will find light in the darkness. When we remain courageous and faithful to one another, we rise above the pain. When we stand together, we become the hope we need.

"The Good Word" Column is published bi-weekly, and can be picked up at the Saint Michael South Entrance.