Five Steps to Finding Peace in Dark Hours

George Bernard Shaw once commented that if the other planets are inhabited, they must be using this one as their insane asylum. Oh well, that’s a topic for another day. I want to share a little formula that gives some of the light by which I try to steer in the darkness, practices I’ve found helpful in those times when it seems as though God has forsaken me. I didn’t find the formula in a book, but it has been hammered out, as it were, in personal experience.

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The first step is to get some strong word from the scripture and cling to it. To be honest, many passages in the Scripture are difficult to understand, many assaults of the higher critics are difficult to refute, but there is one indisputable fact: unique power, comfort, and strength are found in the words of the Bible. I like the verse that says he sent his Word and healed them (Psalm 107:20).

My mum’s friend who suddenly lost her husband of forty-five years cried out, “O God, give me something. Give me something.” As she knelt beside her husband’s lifeless body, she thought she heard God saying to her over and over again,

“My grace is sufficient for thee. My grace is sufficient for thee “ (2 Corinthians 12:9).

And she arose comforted and strengthened for the hard days ahead.

Step number two is to begin praising the Lord. Preposterous though it may appear, we are told, in everything give thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Yet inexplicably, peace and joy follow the giving of thanks and the worship of God. This is especially true in those times when it seems as though God has let us down. If in the darkness we can say, “Lord, I don’t understand any of this, but I do — by faith — love and praise and thank you,” peace comes.

The third step: think about God. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusts in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). God is the x in the equation of life, without which there is no answer. In the midst of our troubles, by a deliberate act of will, we can pause and think about God himself: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchanging in his mercy, justice and goodness and holiness. And God loves me. He loves me just as I am. There will never be a time when he loves me more than he does right this minute. He is with me. He is for me. ‘Say not, my soul, from whence can God relieve thy care? Remember that Omnipotence hath servants everywhere.’ “

Phillip once said, “Lord, show us the father and we will ask for nothing more” (John 14:8).

I’m sure that if we could get even a faint glimpse of what the Father is really like, the purpose of his love toward us and toward all mankind, we would say with Paul that whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us (Romans 8:18). He who has God-and-everything-else has no more than he who has God only.

Number four is to Pray — to tell God what we wish he would do about the problem. Let your requests be made known unto God (Phillipians 4:6). Prayer is not a magic button to press to get what you want. It’s better than that. It’s spreading out our needs and desires before the Father, knowing he will give us what we ask, or he will give us something better.

The last step in the formula is an earthly one: Get to work. After we have done the first four things, then it’s time to go and do our job. Paul tells us to work with our hands (1 Thessalonians 4:11). A writer in this case once wrote, “Think of something that thou oughtest to do, and do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feelings. Do thy work.”