I’ve come to know the hours between 2 and 4 a.m. intimately.
Not by choice—I’m not a night owl—but because these are the hours when sleep often eludes me. I lie awake while the world around me slumbers, my mind suddenly alert in the stillness.
There’s something about these quiet, dark hours that allows thoughts to surface that stay hidden in daylight. Doubts I can ignore amid the busyness of day suddenly feel urgent at 2 a.m. Questions I’ve pushed aside demand attention. Longings I’ve neglected whisper more loudly.
Night has a way of stripping away our defenses, leaving us more vulnerable, more honest, more open to truth.
Perhaps that’s why Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.
John tells us, “He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.'” Many interpretations suggest Nicodemus chose darkness to hide his interest in Jesus, to protect his reputation. While that may be true, I wonder if night also represented his spiritual state—a place of uncertainty, questioning, seeking.
Night can be a metaphor for many spiritual experiences: seasons of doubt, periods of suffering, times when God seems distant or silent. In these dark nights of the soul, we may feel lost, disoriented, even abandoned.
Yet it was precisely in this night that Nicodemus encountered Jesus.
The mystic Saint John of the Cross wrote about “the dark night of the soul”—those times when spiritual dryness and emptiness paradoxically become pathways to deeper intimacy with God. He observed that sometimes our most profound spiritual growth occurs not in moments of clarity and light, but in periods of confusion and darkness.
We see this pattern throughout scripture. Jacob wrestled with God at night and received a blessing. Samuel heard God’s voice in the darkness while the lamp was still burning. The Exodus began at midnight. Jesus was born while shepherds watched their flocks by night. The resurrection was discovered in the early darkness before dawn.
Night, it seems, is often where God does transformative work.
And so it was with Nicodemus. In the vulnerability of darkness, he voiced his questions. In the honesty of night, he heard Jesus speak of being born anew. In the quiet of evening, seeds were planted that would eventually bloom into discipleship.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her profound work “Learning to Walk in the Dark,” challenges our tendency to equate darkness with negativity. She writes, “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
Taylor invites us to practice “lunar spirituality” rather than “solar spirituality” – recognizing that faith, like the moon, has its necessary waxing and waning, its shadows and illuminations. What appears as darkness may actually be the necessary space where God works most profoundly. As she further observes, “New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
What if the “nights” in our spiritual lives—those times of doubt, suffering, confusion, or spiritual dryness—are not aberrations or failures but necessary seasons of growth? What if God is at work in our darkness in ways we cannot yet perceive? We are reminded that “darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.”
What if we develop “night vision” – the spiritual capacity to perceive divine presence even when conventional certainties fade away?
Nicodemus’s story offers us hope that even our darkest nights can become holy ground for encounter. His journey reminds us that questions voiced in darkness can lead to transformation in light.
The beautiful irony is that while Nicodemus first approached Jesus in physical darkness, by the end of John’s Gospel, he stands in broad daylight, publicly claiming his discipleship as he helps prepare Jesus’s body for burial. The night visit became a pathway to daylight devotion.
Whatever spiritual night you might be experiencing—whether doubt, grief, loneliness, or spiritual dryness—know that you are not alone there. Like Nicodemus, you can meet Christ in that very darkness.
Your questions, your uncertainties, your struggles are not obstacles to faith but potentially the very gateway to deeper relationship with God.
As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, “The way of the moon is a way of receiving light even when much has been taken away.” In our darkest moments, we may discover a different kind of light—more gentle, more mysterious, but no less divine.
Reflection:
What “night season” are you experiencing in your spiritual life right now? How might God be present and working in ways you haven’t recognized? Consider what it would mean to trust that God is with you in this darkness, planting seeds that will eventually grow toward light.
Prayer:
God of both night and day, I thank you that darkness is not dark to you. Meet me in my questions, my doubts, my confusion—just as you met Nicodemus. Help me develop night vision that perceives your presence even when I cannot see clearly. Plant seeds in the dark soil of my uncertainty that will, in your time, grow into new life. I trust that you are working even now, especially in the places where I feel most lost. Amen.