I’ll never forget a visit I made years ago to a home in darkness. At midday, blinds were shut. Lights were out. A candle burned. The woman inside was trapped in never-ending grief from the death of her daughter 13 years before.

Despair happens. “My heart is heavy with a burden for my drug addicted son,” someone wrote to me. “He can no longer hold a job and cannot take care of his family. He lives each moment for the next fix. I have prayed, but I am feeling despair.”

This is darkness, and there is no answer to it—except the Cross of Christ. We must pause at the darkness of the Cross, for it reveals a mystery. “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.” Matthew 27:45.

This is not the darkness of midnight, but an unknowable darkness of midday. Luke says simply, “the sun stopped shining”. Luke 23:45. It is a cavernous darkness, “thick and dreadful”—like that which came upon Adam at creation, when he symbolically “died” so that out of him might come new life. It is “a darkness that can be felt,” like that of the plague on Egypt. It is “blackest darkness”. 2 Peter 2:7. It is the gloom of the world laid on the Light of the world.

The darkness that accompanies this epochal death is not merely the absence of light; it is the flight of good in the face of evil. The face that once “shone like the sun” does not shine now. Matthew 17:2. The clothes that became “white as light” on the Mount of Transfiguration are no clothes at all now; they give way to the shame of nakedness, exposing the condition of all of us in our sin.

The darkness comes in the wake of cruel slander. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him.” Matthew 27:43. Criticism and slander always lead to darkness, especially in the church. By these things we curse each other, just as religious people of the time cursed Jesus.

For the Man crucified and broken, the darkness envelopes, erupts, cascades, and finally descends into despair: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Spectators grope their way back to Jerusalem, where torches flare and candles flame. But the Son of God can make no such journey. Spiked to a tree, he knows he must remain there to die the darkest death on behalf of sinners.

Those who quickly dismiss Christ’s despair—or the despair believers may experience in times of acute struggle—fail to understand humanity’s role in the battle between good and evil. Despair is a real condition. It must be acknowledged and expressed if light is to return. This is the necessary, biblical path of godly lament—a path taken by Job, David, Jeremiah, and Christ himself.

On the path of lament, unthinking clichés (“Cheer up. . . . Don’t take it so seriously. . . . Just believe. . . . You shouldn’t talk like that, you know”) offend God and the sufferer.

The good news is that God is not Lord of part, he is Lord of all. He is Lord even of darkness. At creation, God separated light from darkness and asserted his ownership of darkness by giving it a name: “Night”. Even the darkness, as created by God, was declared “good”.

At the Exodus, darkness protected the people of God. At Mount Sinai, God made darkness his covering and canopy. Psalm 18:11.

At the Cross, the darkness that oppresses also becomes the darkness that comforts. The darkness is “the mantle of God” that clothes the Saviour's naked body against curious eyes. With the darkness, the jeering of the onlookers is silenced; curses go mute. In the long hours of darkness, Jesus retreats to the one refuge remaining—the silent, strong embrace of his Father’s arms. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

In the Father’s embrace, even while darkness continues, Christ rests in ultimate truth—“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5.

There is no ready rescue for the dying Saviour; the grave continues his darkness and confirms it.

But wait! Morning comes. There is a flash like lightning. In a moment, Heaven’s special forces realise full, resplendent victory over the dominion of darkness.

This is not only the Saviour's story. It’s our story, too.

This article first appeared in modified form in Mid-America Outlook, April 2007. Copyright © 2009 by Ed Gallagher (South Pacific edition). / Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.