Days of Darkness

"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: but if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity." Ecclesiastes 11:7,8

It is Plato who is famous for giving us the theory of the sun as Truth that gives us light, and therefore clarity to see reality. Although Solomon lived a long time before Plato was born, it is not at all improbable that he was aware of the same logic.
There will be days when we are walking in the sunlight, everything is clear and bright. We have a good idea about where we are going: we see the road before our feet, we can see immediate obstacles, and the world is alive and colorful, beautiful and harmless.
Then come the days of darkness, when the sun is hid, and we feel lost in a land of shadows, constantly being fooled. All obstacles seem large and sinister, our surroundings look ready to eat us alive, everyone we meet is a stranger and a shadowy figure, and the road has disappeared before our eyes.
"Let him remember the days of darkness." We all look at the dark times and say, "I'd like to forget that." We must not! If we are God's children, and therefore all things work together for our good (Rom. 8:28, remember?), then that means that the days of darkness are just as valuable as the days of the sun. God never sends us through things willy-nilly, though we may go through them helter-skelter. As Oswald Chambers said, "We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly..." Then we step back into the sun and see more clearly the road we went through in the dark; and what God teaches us in that moment of clarity, we must not forget, and be thankful that there are many days of darkness, for with them will come many days of clarity.