Deep Calls Unto Deep: Book Review of Darkness is as Light

Book Review:
Darkness is as Light: Devotions for Persisting in Hard Places

This fall is a dark moment for Americans, headed into a winter that promises to amplify the affliction of our growing pandemic. We are also facing one of the most contentious elections in our history, our fears about the future laid bare and the ordinary polls ensnared in threats of voter suppression and intimidation. Mourning has enveloped our everyday existence, whether it’s our children’s inability to attend school or play sports, or a job that once provided security and now no longer exists, or the constant threat of illness and grief over the loss of loved ones.

Amid this atmosphere heavy with uncertainty, Darkness is as Light, a new anthology from Park End Books, does not seek to diminish the reality of our circumstances but rather find even in the difficulty the means that could allow us to experience life abundantly and by God’s grace. Though the book predominantly relies on short narrative writing, it includes a preface to each section in the form of a poetry and features several illustrations that provide a graceful accompaniment to the scripture, denoting the chapter.

Edited by author Summer Kinard, Darkness is as Light is a collection of women’s reflections on scripture, often through the lens of their own lived experience. The brevity and clarity of their voices provides the reader with accessible opportunities for contemplation, however momentary the opportunity is to engage with the content. In her introduction, Kinard writes, “One rarely encounters a book for Christian women that bears witness to Christ with women rather than attempts to tidy and boss them into a socially acceptable (even if spiritually dead) facsimile of an idea about what a Christian woman ought to be.” She begins the book with scriptures about freedom, and how intertwined the idea of lightness and being free is with the words of the Savior throughout the Gospels.

The real beauty of this collection lies with the ingathering of the devotions, which allows for a cadence as you read through the pieces that encompass each theme. Nine weeks of devotionals include concepts such as “Trial” or “Provision.” “Death,” arguably the most impenetrable darkness we face, is set squarely in the center, followed directly by a section entitled, “Balm.” This immediacy commemorates the interplay between dark and light that focuses the collection, and is repeated throughout in a way that gently reminds us of the overarching theme of the book: that through Christ, we find our hope renewed even in the ugliness and bitter parts of life.

Particularly in this time of difficulty and grieving, this compilation floods the shadows with the light of our risen Lord without condescending or contrition. Rather, the twenty-two women of faith—Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant—describe in concrete stories their own epiphanies and encounters with God, offering sincere and simple ways to contemplate the words of scripture.

“And the King will answer, ‘Truly I saw to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’” Quoting Matthew 25:40, Andrea Bailey looks on the homeless and disregarded in her own community, discerning how Christ lives in the margins where our fears are most amplified. “God help me,” she writes, “to see while there is still time. Help me to remember you, dwelling in those whom the world has forgotten.” Though this book is brief, Darkness is as Light is no mere dalliance with pain and suffering. Rather, it endeavors to provide readers dwelling in even the most despondent valleys of their life with a lens by which to see Christ. It was refreshing to read pieces paired alongside scripture that provide occasion for longer contemplation, but are also allow for readers who might be fighting their own anxieties or depression the opportunity to engage with brief narratives of hope.

In one of the concluding pieces, “Ordinary Martyrdom,” author Monica Spoor discusses her autism and the continual journey try to understand Christ, wrestling with Philippians 1:21, “…to die is to gain.” At the end of her reflection, Spoor writes of her growing understanding that to be with Christ is not solely trial and tribulation, but sometimes ordinary—even comfortable. “I hate touch,” she writes. “But sometimes I can feel Him hold my hand and it doesn’t hurt.” Dark is as Light is a beautiful accompaniment as we labor to know God during a time of widening shadow, and a considerable achievement in its ability to provide comfort for those who would seek it.

-B. Rubrecht

Darkness is as Light

Devotions for Persisting in Hard Places
Park End Books, pp. 191, $15.99