When the Light Gets Turned On

A Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

For Once You Were in Darkness

I once was in darkness

My grief never-ending

Now my cup overflows

My days were all sadness

Under its weight I was bending

I once was in darkness

You shattered my weariness

My brokenness mending

Now my cup overflows

I had lived in a blindness

Of my own wending

I once was in darkness

Having not shared aloneness

Their concern condescending

Now my cup overflows

I am blessed by your kindness

A lamb you are tending

I once was in darkness

Now my cup overflows

---

There is a phrase in Paul's letter to the Ephesians that sounds almost too simple to be true: once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Not once you were in darkness. Once you were darkness. The distinction matters. It is not a description of circumstance. It is a description of what we had become.

The poem knows this from inside. I had lived in a blindness of my own wending — not a darkness that fell on us from outside, but one we had, somehow, threaded ourselves into. The grief that had no end. The weariness that bends us double. The aloneness we had not yet learned to share, and the concern of others that, in our isolation, felt condescending rather than kind. We are not always only done to. Sometimes, quietly, we do.

Samuel arrives at Bethlehem looking for a king and nearly gets it wrong. He sees Jesse's eldest — tall, capable, clearly the one — and the word comes back like a quiet correction: the Lord does not see as mortals see; mortals look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. The anointed one turns out to be the youngest, out in the field, tending sheep. It is a pattern that will not stop repeating.

The man in John's Gospel was born blind, and the first question his neighbors ask is about fault. Jesus refuses the frame entirely. This is not about whose sin caused the darkness. This is about what is about to become visible. The healing happens in stages — mud, washing, seeing, confessing, claiming. The ones who believe they already see are, by the end, the most thoroughly blind. I once was in darkness. I had lived in a blindness of my own wending.

But the psalm will not leave us there. The Lord is my shepherd. Even through the darkest valley, the rod and the staff are present. The table is set. The cup overflows — not carefully filled, not merely adequate, but overflows. This is not the language of barely managing. It is the language of abundance given to people who were, not long ago, bent under the weight of sadness.

A lamb you are tending. That is what changes everything — not that we found our way out of the dark, but that we were found in it. The Shepherd knew where to look. The anointing comes to those in the field, doing their small faithful work, not yet imagining what is about to be placed on their heads.

I once was in darkness. Now my cup overflows.

---

The scriptures for this Sunday: 1 Samuel 16:1–13 | Psalm 23 | Ephesians 5:8–14 |

John 9:1–41