Day 18 – Afraid of the dark

The following reflection was first shared at the monthly online gathering of the GoHealth Community – we’re meeting this evening, 18th December. We’re looking forward to seeing you there, even if you’ve never been before, or are new to the community and this is the first you’ve heard of it. It’s our last gathering of the year and will have a festive feel – don’t miss it! Register here. December Online Gathering of The GoHealth Community 2025 – GoHealth

Advent is the ancient season of waiting for Christians — a time that gently invites us to live in the not-yet, in the dimness before dawn. It is a season that doesn’t hurry us out of the shadows but asks us to dwell there a little while, to listen, to wait, and to hope. 

And perhaps that is especially important this year, because the world feels very dark. We don’t need imagination to sense it — we feel it in our communities, in the headlines, in the exhaustion of so many people doing their best to hold everything together. There is conflict, grief, anxiety, and a deep fragility woven through so much of life. If we are honest, the darkness can sometimes feel close. 

Yet our faith tells us that God is not pushed away by darkness. God meets us there. Throughout scripture, darkness is not only a place of fear but the place where creation began, where dreams were given, where stars proclaimed promise, and where resurrection quietly stirred before anyone saw the dawn. Something holy happens in the dark. Seeds break open underground. New possibilities take root. God moves in ways we cannot yet see. 

Of course, many of us are uncomfortable with the dark — and that is deeply human. One of my favourite childhood books captures this tenderness perfectly: The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark (Jill Tomlinson).

It begins: 

“Plop was a baby barn owl, and he lived with his mummy and daddy at the top of a very tall tree in a field. Plop was fat and fluffy. He had a beautiful heart-shaped ruff. He had enormous, round eyes. He had very knackety knees. In fact he was exactly the same as every baby barn owl that has ever been – except for one thing. Plop was afraid of the dark. 

‘You can’t be afraid of the dark,’ said his mummy. ‘Owls are never afraid of the dark.’ 

‘This one is,’ Plop said. 

‘But owls are night birds,’ she said. 

Plop looked down at his toes. ‘I don’t want to be a night bird,’ he mumbled. ‘I want to be a day bird.’ 

‘You are what you are,’ said Mrs Barn Owl firmly. 

‘Yes, I know,’ agreed Plop, ‘and what I are is afraid of the dark.’” 

‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Barn Owl. It was clear that she was going to need a lot of patience. She shut her eyes and tried to think how best she could help Plop not to be afraid. Plop waited. 

His mother, patient and wise, tells him, “You are only afraid of the dark because you don’t know about it.  

And the rest of the book is Plops adventures to discover that the dark can be beautiful, kind, exciting, and full of wonder. 

That simple childhood story contains a profound invitation: maybe the darkness is not what we think it is. Maybe it holds gifts, truths, and healing we have not yet learned to recognise. 

Every Advent, I’m reminded of this in the cathedral where I sometimes worship. The service begins in complete darkness. It becomes so dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face. And strangely, I love that moment. Your body dissolves, the darkness is deep, still enveloping…you feel like just a consciousness but surrounded by hundreds of other. It is a darkness that somehow holds us together. And then, one by one, candles are lit. The choir begins to move. Light travels slowly, almost shyly, through the shadows, and something begins to grow within the darkness rather than against it. 

Once the candles are lit, the choir have arrived in the lady chapel, out of sight, but then they sing O Radiant Dawn by James MacMillian – with the following line building in volume into a huge crescendo  

“Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness.” 

Not: come, remove the darkness. 
Not: come, judge the darkness. 
But shine on us — here, where we are. 

God’s presence meeting us exactly in the shadowed places we would rather avoid. God’s light reaching into our hearts, not once the darkness has passed, but within it.  

For me, that is the heart of Advent. Not the denial of darkness, but the trust that God is already there. God who shines into our waiting. God who heals in the quiet spaces we cannot yet see. God who is patient with our fears, just as Mrs Barn Owl was patient with Plop, whispering: “Maybe you’re only afraid because you don’t yet know what the dark can hold.” 

Our Waiting As Healing Advent journey invites us to explore exactly that — to linger in the stillness, to breathe in the quiet, to sit in the ache, to hold emptiness in our hands, and to discover that even here, even now, God is at work. 

May this Advent teach us that the darkness is not empty, and we are not alone. 

May the Radiant Light come and shine on us who dwell in darkness — and may we find, in our waiting, the beginnings of healing. 

Listen to O Radiant Dawn here, on the GoHealth Advent Playlist.

Share your thoughts

In these darkening days of the year, in the northern hemisphere, we pause to consider our relationship to the dark – is it something you are afraid of, or even delight in? Or somewhere in between?