Dark Night of the Soul

This is in honor of the Spohrs, who are grieving the loss of their sweet little daughter, Maddie, and the Freemans, who are grieving the loss of their sweet little daughter, Kayleigh.


While I've never experienced what they are going thru, I have had a "dark night of the soul" where it seems the sun will never rise again. It took a few years for that sun to shine again & around that time, I had a dream that was so vivid that I wrote a poem describing what I saw. Years later, I shared that dream & poem with my sister-in-law & she put into pastels what I had described in words.




Vision—Rubble

A pile of rubble
Shards of broken pottery
Discards
Rejects
Garbage

A Man comes—walks through
the place.
Eyes piercing, searching,
looking intensely…

He bends, drops to His knees.
Scarred hands pry through
the rubble.
He digs—carefully…
not because of His
hands, which crack
and bleed—opened
again at some ancient
scarred wound.

No—the care He takes
is for the shards.
These He holds carefully—
Mindless of the pain they bring to Him.
Rather, with gentle care
—as a caress—
He lifts each piece
from the rubble,
piecing together a vessel.
Searching for each lost piece,
bringing it back,
that the vessel might be whole.

No piece is overlooked.
Each fragment is valuable—
priceless.
The pieces found,
He turns back to His house,
cradling the broken vessel
in His arms.

Once home, the pieces
are laid out before Him.
He picks each one up
Remembering.
As He remembers,
He washes the piece…
with water & tears.
Washing away the grime
so that each piece
—though broken from the whole—
is beautiful again.

Then, painstakingly,
He begins to put this vessel
—cracked, damaged, discarded—
Back together again.
Each piece telling a portion
of the story of His vessel’s
life.

Time has lost meaning
as He works on.
On—through the evening,
and on, into the darkest part
of the night.
On—
never stopping,
except, perhaps, to admire
His work.

As dawn breaks,
the vessel stands
Complete:
each piece in place…
nothing missing.

Whole—whole, but cracked.
He fingers the vessel lovingly.
Running worn hands over
the cracks.

A beautiful vessel…
and yet…

The Potter gently kneads
His clay.
As He does,
Blood from His injured hands
is mixed in and through.

Then He gently applies
this new mixture to His
precious vessel.
Smoothing over the cracks;
filling them in until—finally—
they disappear.

Refined,
the vessel is placed in the
furnace.
The heat seems unbearable.
How is it the cracks do not loosen?
Perhaps by some power,
the vessel is held together in
this furnace of affliction.
Ah, yes: ‘tis the Potter’s
own blood which keeps the
vessel whole.

When, at long last,
the vessel is pulled from
the fire, the Potter’s
joy cannot be contained.

There!
There is His creation:
Beautiful
as before any damage
took place…
Only…more so.

The Potter’s joy radiates out…
and by some miracle, pours
into this vessel.
Filling
Filling
Overflowing.

The miracle of the Potter’s
Hands: transforming
that which was destroyed
into the perfect container
for His unspeakable joy.