Gordon, you and Gail are going through one of the darkest moments you will ever face, and you have a choice: Will you deny the pain and run from it or will you embrace the pain and squeeze out of it everything God has for you?"

The man who spoke those words changed our lives.

His words echo the theology that often gets lost in the shadows of dark moments: God can play tricks on evil, if we let him, and pull from the darkness light and beauty.

Dark moments are not the exception, even in a life God blesses.

I would not have said that in my youth. I considered pain and suffering in the life of a Christian minister as gross anomalies or the result of sin.

But I've come to see the dark moments of life as precious moments, times to ask, "Is this a moment God can speak to me?"

As I look over my almost sixty years, I feel like the traveler in Pilgrim's Progress: I can spot dark moments in which I've seen God at work in my life in a clear way. In each I heard a message in the midst of pain. I ...