On the Verge of Collapse

- journeying through the spiritual tunnel

By Ma Li

You can soar like an eagle; or face total destruction. It all depends on whether you can make your way out of the tunnel.

An unanswered prayer

From the time I believed in the Lord, He had always guided me and spoken to me. However, once when I was in a state of deep sorrow and confusion and needing Him most, He became silent. He seemed to have disappeared. No matter how loudly I cried out to Him, He was nowhere to be seen.

What was more dreadful was that none of my previous spiritual training seemed able to help me. The Lord was strangely silent. He seemed to be turning a deaf ear to my desperate cries. I was not even sure if He was listening at all. When I prayed I seemed to be talking to thin air.

Had I sinned and turned my back on the Lord? But in all honesty I could not find anything I had done that could possibly have offended Him! Then followed intolerable agony and confusion. I prayed again and again till I was exhausted. The Lord was continuing His cruel silence indefinitely and my anguish seemed to be there to stay indefinitely too.

Peter Kreeft once said that he had a dreadful secret to tell, a secret that most Christians would not like to hear. He believed that almost all Christians have complained to the Lord one way or another. Teresa of Avila who is considered a saint by many believers, once challenged God when she fell heavily from a cart and was tossed into a muddy pit. The 'saint' failed to turn a smiling face to God when tossed into the mud, and there is nothing unexpected about this. Only pigs smile in the mud. The Lord told Teresa that this was the way He treats His friends. Teresa replied sarcastically, "Oh Lord, no wonder you have so few friends!" Indeed, "For many are invited, but few are chosen." (Mt. 22:14)

Why the darkness?

Professor Wen Wei-yao was my academic advisor at the Ontario Seminary in Canada. Even when he was in agonizing pain he would stay calm and composed. His words of counsel completely dumbfounded me, "If your sufferings persist even after you have solemnly confessed your sins, then according to my experience, I believe that God has led you into the dark night of the soul, a time when God intentionally retreats and leaves you alone so that you can learn to grow. You are left completely helpless, as if in total darkness and God has arranged it so. You can neither see nor feel anything. You comprehend nothing. Your only sensations are of lassitude, exhaustion and agony. But do not be afraid. If this is what is happening to you, then God is giving you a chance to learn to grow. It has nothing to do with your being good or bad." Professor Wen also said that he did not know when God would release me. But he went on to raise a surprising question, "Maria, can you continue to trust the Lord in spite of what you know or feel? in spite of your past experience? Can you follow the Lord regardless of what people say to you? Can you trust the Lord even if you could lose your life?" I remained silent for a short while before I replied, "Yes, I can." "Then I have no worries about you. Go in peace."

In the utter darkness of the spiritual tunnel, I saw my own hidden sins, sins that I had either not been able to see or nor wanted to see. Sins like vanity, cowardice, stubbornness, arrogance, lack of confidence, bad temper and so on. I was surprised that when things were going well I had never been aware of all these. It was just as Professor Wen said, "God loves to talk to us, but we are often unable to, or unwilling to listen to Him when everything is OK with us. As a result, God has to place us in a situation where we are able to take a hard look at ourselves." When this happened to me, my inner heart, which had been a foreign land even to myself, was wide open to His scrutiny.

Nevertheless, why was everything so dark? Isn't it true that "God is light and in him there is no darkness at all?" (I John 1:5) Professor Wen explained that darkness originates from men, not from God. In the spiritual tunnel, it was not that you are too far away from God, but that you are closer to God than ever before. When a man walks in the dark his eyes get used to the darkness and when he comes out into the sunlight he is unable to see anything. It is our lack of adaptability to the true light that causes the darkness.

I was very angry

To my great surprise, God healed my sickness by allowing me to argue boldly with Him! OK, Lord! I've spoken to you again and again. I'm really tired of all this. Are you? You know very well that I am too, that I've done all I can. I can't do any more. It's your turn now! I'm at my wits' end. Is it because I don't have enough faith in you? How much faith do you expect me to have? Tell me! How long do you want me to continue to struggle? Now I'm really confused. It was you who called me and brought me to where I am today. Do you really want to destroy me and dishonor your name? Now I completely give up. I don't want to save myself. I can't anyway. Oh Lord! I'm in your hands. Do what you like with me!

In my anger I began to envy Job's three friends who quietly kept him company for three days and three nights. It was when they began to talk that Job really suffered. Wait a minute. Oh Lord, are you just quietly keeping me company? Are you just listening to my complaints, my weeping, wailing, arguing and anger? You are silent but you have not gone away. You know everything and you do not need my explanation. Between the heavens and the earth, there is you and there is me. You want me to come to you by myself and to you alone! You do not want any interference, nor do you want anyone to explain things to me. All you want is to meet me face to face. Just you and me!

Doesn't the Bible record many of your children complaining to you? Didn't Job and Jeremiah give vent to some really bitter words to you? They sounded as if they were accusing God! Why does the Bible record their desperate cries? Was it so that I will not fall into despair? Job's fierce accusations really shocked his three pious friends! But God, what was your judgment of Job? Oh, you knew Job's heart! You knew too well that the accusations he uttered in his bitter despair were exactly what he wanted to deny in his heart!

Then suddenly, an inexplicable tranquility came over my whole being. Nothing was binding me. Gone were the headache, the despair, the anxieties about my relationships with other people. I was standing before my God and my Lord, completely new and refreshed as if I had just come through physical death.

Nothing seemed to matter any more. Not even death! No matter how much I was broken, or shattered to pieces, whether ground to dust, or dissolved like smoke, this open relationship between myself and God, along with His strong love, would never be shaken! At that moment I felt complete freedom. "I know that my redeemer lives!" (Jobs 19:25)

Like an eagle stirring up the nest

My practical situation did not necessarily follow this new realization of the mind, however. Although that day was definitely a turning point, it took me quite a while to recover. I was weak and had to spend a lot of time in bed. So I listened to some tapes Professor Wen had given me. Through these tapes God spoke to me and analyzed my experience of the spiritual tunnel. I heard Li Si-jing'sThe high-flying eagle, in which he commented on the verses from Deuteronomy 32:11-12: "Like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions, the Lord alone led him."

The original Hebrew word for hover was dive. A man had gone to observe how a mother eagle taught her young to fly. He saw that when the young eaglet was old enough to learn to fly, the mother eagle stirred up the nest, forcing it to fly. At first the little eagle was so scared that it instinctively held on to the nest and refused to let go. So the mother eagle took a different approach. She flew high up into the sky till she appeared to the little eagle like a small black dot. Then she plummeted down upon the nest.

The little eagle was so terrified that it had to spread its wings and escape from the nest. The first flight was always terrible as the little eagle fell out of its nest and tumbled down the slope. But the mother eagle was already there ready to catch it with her wings and she bore it safely back to the nest. After several more tries the little eagle had learned how to fly.

I had heard the Lord's voice! But I did not have the courage to grow up. I wanted to stay in the safe and warm nest forever. Oh Lord, it was you that stirred up the nest to force me out. I fell out and rolled downhill, crying for help. Then it was you who caught me with your wings and guided me to safety. You put me in the dark, in the spiritual tunnel, so that I could explore what it was that I really cared about and what was most important in my life. No, you didn't just leave me in the dark trying to figure out what to learn or how to learn. You led me step by step into knowing who you were and being close to you. There were times when I was desperate about everything I saw and everybody I met, when I lost my health and felt that my body was as good as dead (Romans 4:19), when I was anxious and exhausted, when I was utterly helpless and utterly lonely, when my spirit was suffering in utter darkness. But while all this was happening, you were transforming my spirit into something I had never dreamed of before.

Only one way out

In our journey towards spiritual maturity, there are mountains, plains, valleys, wilderness and cliffs. And there are spiritual tunnels. In most cases, we can see. Even if we are at a dead end, we can still rely on a compass to find our way out. So we always seem to hold the upper hand. In the tunnel, however, we are completely helpless. And this is absolutely necessary, because we can never become saints on our own. Only God alone can accomplish this. In the tunnel there is utter darkness and we cannot see. We may know where we came from but there is no going back and we cannot go forward either. We cannot proceed; we cannot judge; we cannot control; we cannot get our bearings. The tunnel leads in only one direction. Although we are not going to get lost, we do not know where it is that the tunnel will lead us. In the darkness we feel our way forward like the blind. We are scared and yet we are safe because there is no threat or temptation from the Evil One, nor is there any danger of going in the wrong direction. Our whole spiritual focus is on the Lord.

In the darkness we are only sure of one thing: since this is a tunnel, somebody must have already gone through it, though we have no way of telling how they managed to emerge from it. Professor Wen told me that he had been through it. He did not know how I would get out of the tunnel because God gives different directions to different people. There is no rule to follow and no reference points to check. But knowing that other people have been through this can be a huge encouragement for those who are still in the dark.

I have been through the spiritual tunnel several times in the past few years. Every time I was led into it, I would remember the basic principle Professor Wen had given me: "Continue to put your faith in the Lord regardless of how much you know, of what you feel, of your past experience. Follow the Lord regardless of what people have to say to you. Believe Him and have faith in Him even if you could lose your life." I find this highly applicable because when we are at our own wits end we can only go forward! We have our own limitations and we cannot march forward. But when we are in despair in the spiritual tunnel, "from the ends of the earth I call to you, lead me to the rock that is higher than I." (Psalm 61:2)