Wisdom at Work in the Darkness

by Kristine Shiraki

“Notice that when God did His most awful, majestic works, He always did them in the darkness…” —A.W. Tozer

As a child I was afraid of the dark. I didn’t like the feeling of not being able to see what was in the corner of my room and admittedly, premature exposure to scary movies didn’t help the cause. When I was very young, I slept with the door wide open, but even as I got older it was always left ajar. There’s something about the darkness that we humans (and most children) dislike—discomfort with the unknown, anxiety, and fear about what could be.

For my husband and me, the journey to become parents felt as though we were in a tunnel with no end. We struggled with fertility for many years and in our sixth year of marriage, after dozens of appointments and countless prayers, we were finally pregnant with our first child. All was well until it wasn’t. On September 4, at my 20-week ultrasound we were told I would go into preterm labor without a very risky surgical procedure. If surgery was successful, it would very likely only buy us a few weeks at most. Our baby would most likely be very premature with high risk of many complications.

I was on strict orders to stay home on bedrest for the rest of my pregnancy and could not do any normal household chores as any physical strain could make me go into pre-term labor. With each passing hour we thanked God that the baby was still growing and safe in my womb. The weeks and months that followed seemed exceptionally long and the nights (literally and figuratively) grew longer. I only left the house for doctor’s appointments, and each time I went in, the specialized maternal fetal medicine team was astounded that I was still pregnant. Halloween came and went. Thanksgiving came and went. Christmas came and went. We walked into the New Year and I was still pregnant. We welcomed our healthy baby girl two weeks later.

No doctor would have predicted this story. But my Physician wrote this one. Only He knew the ending and that in those dark days and weeks, He was working on something beautiful. It was in that season that I clung to His words and drank them in. Numerous people visited me at home to pray over me and to share visions and words over my baby, to hang out, to do my laundry, and to provide a meal. We received wave after wave of love and care from the Body of Christ and He was teaching us not only how to trust Him but also how to abide in Him. In God’s ultimate wisdom He drew me into a place of greater intimacy and reliance on His saving power.

When we read about the “valley of the shadow of death” or hear about others who experience the depths of the dark night of the soul, we may find ourselves empathizing with the suffering of others because we too have walked those lonely roads. And while it may have been a painful and difficult season, we know that God, indeed, was at work. As hindsight often gives us a better perspective, we can see that the seeming silence was not synonymous with inaction.

Last year as a community, students and staff dove deep into the study of one virtue each month. This school year we have tied our understanding and desire to grow in virtue to the attributes of God. Our hope and aim is that by looking more attentively at who our God is, we are better able to understand who we are and how we are to live. Several weeks ago I was studying the wisdom of God and was struck by A.W. Tozer’s words from The Attributes of God:

“Notice that when God did His most awful, majestic works, He always did them in the darkness… He formed Him in the sweet darkness of the virgin’s womb, unseen by mortal eye. The bones were formed in the womb of her that was with child…when He was nailed on the cross, hanging there twisting and writhing in death for you and me, darkness settled down on the earth…as though God were saying, ‘You can’t see Him; I won’t even let you see Him die. I’m doing my wonders of the atonement in the darkness… And when they came to see Him rise, He was already risen. They came along [well] before day, when it was still dark, but He was not there; He was risen! Every great thing that God has done, he has done in the silence and the darkness because His wisdom is such that no man could understand it anyhow.”

This theme of light and darkness is all the more poignant this time of year when we are all getting used to the earlier evenings when the sky begins to dim by late afternoon and the nighttime chill creeps through the air. And fittingly, we are ushered into a holiday season where the twinkling lights shine through the longer nights, further reminding us of the Hope that came to save the world and the Hope that will undoubtedly come again to make all things new. This Advent season, perhaps we can also linger in the stillness of the dark to trust that our wise and omnipotent God is doing the most wondrous works in and through each of our lives.

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Mrs. Kristine Shiraki partners with Donum Dei Classical Academy as our Assistant Principal and Logic I Homeroom and Humanities Teacher. Mrs. Shiraki began her career teaching middle school in South Central Los Angeles. She went on to earn a Masters in Education from Harvard University and has trained leaders and shaped state and local policy through targeted educational initiatives, consulted local school districts and governmental agencies in improving their systems and effectiveness, and has served on various boards and ministry teams with global reach.