A Lenten Journey of Sacred Presence: Walking Through the Dark Night

A Lenten Journey of Sacred Presence: Walking Through the Dark Night

Heja sits quietly in her tent at Koursigue Refugee Camp, her daughters close by. Once a confident and respected teacher in Sudan, she now finds herself surrounded by the dust of Chad, tracing the contours of survival. Her thoughts often drift to the classroom she lost and the future she hopes to rebuild for her children. She knows dust intimately — having walked through it, carried it in her lungs as she fled her homeland and tasted it in the refugee camp where hope at times can feel as scarce as water.

For displaced individuals like Heja, every day in a camp carries the weight of loss and vulnerability. For Christians observing Lent, her story can feel like an invitation into lament — a reminder of our mortality and our deep need for mercy. We lament for their trauma, their loss, for the scars they bear — physical, psychological and emotional. We are drawn into a deeper understanding of the fragility of life and the daily struggle to hold onto hope in the wilderness.

Centuries ago, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross wrote about a different kind of journey; what he called, the dark night of the soul. Imprisoned in a monastery cell barely large enough to stand in, deprived of light except for a tiny window high above, St. John discovered something profound: sometimes God draws nearest in the very depths of our disorientation and loss.

This is the paradox of Lent — a forty-day season that invites us to enter the desert intentionally, stripping away the comfortable distractions that shield us from our own relational and spiritual poverty. We put ashes on our foreheads not as decoration but as declaration: we are finite, fragile and utterly dependent upon grace.

Lent teaches us that the dark night is not God’s absence. Rather, it is a divine instruction; it’s a loving reformation of our spiritual senses. In this darkness, our false selves that are constructed from achievements, material possessions and vocational titles dissolve. This is where our true selves begin to emerge, beloved and held by God.

The story of World Relief began during this season over 80 years ago, when believers in a Boston church felt burdened for those suffering from the devastating effects of World War II in Europe. They fasted, prayed, gave sacrificially, and out of that groundswell of faith in action, World Relief was born. 

This season is deeply meaningful to us as an organization and we are reminded time and again that we stand on the shoulders of the church — a body of believers that, like St. John, discovers something profound in the valley of shadow. It discovers the strength to bear another’s cross, a strength born out of love, of grace. A strength born of a deep, intentional empathy. An empathy that binds itself to families forced to flee, like that of Heja. 

This Lenten season, as we journey through these forty days of discipline and reflection, we are invited into the dark nights experienced by people for whom we care. For some, it is the darkness of grief that refuses tidy resolution; for others, the shadow of injustice that grows longer each day. For millions like Heja, the darkness is not metaphorical but painfully real. There’s uncertainty of tomorrow’s shelter, tomorrow’s meal and tomorrow’s safety. Heja bears witness to those daily struggles: mothers unable to feed their children, girls facing danger just to gather water and neighbors weighed down by untreated trauma.

Yet, even in the most desperate places, the darkness is not empty. There are glimmers of hope, like a new borehole bringing safe drinking water, a nutrition center saving an infant’s life, and women gathering to rebuild community and a future for their children in the camp. The presence of God flickers quietly but surely for those who stand in solidarity.

This is Lent’s invitation to us: not to flee from darkness, but to befriend it, letting it teach us what high noon never could. We discover that God is not only the God of resurrection morning, but also of Good Friday’s anguished cry and Holy Saturday’s devastating silence. As St. John of the Cross declared, “in the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”

So perhaps it is good that the darkness remains for a season. Yet may we always be encouraged: we are never alone in it. As you enter this season, consider how your practices of prayer, fasting, or giving might become acts of solidarity with women like Heja. How can you walk alongside courageous souls navigating through their own dark nights and waiting for the dawn?