My kids love the Lego movie so so much. Like too much, in that I have almost the entire thing memorized. And there is this part in it where Batman has this song where he sings, “Darkness, Continued Darkness, More Darkness, The opposite of light, Black Hole” And it just keeps going…it’s a pretty dark song obviously.

But a little while ago I read through the book of Mark straight, and I noticed that it too, like this Batman song, has a really dark undercurrent. That if you read the book of Mark at many points it just seems…” dark, continued darkness, more darkness”. You read of the crossing of the sea, the disciples fear, their confusion, and then this happening a second time. You read of fear of the demon possessed man. You read a really dark crucifixion scene, and the ending of Mark (the original one) ends with just fear and trembling. In many ways it’s a dark book.

On Sunday, what we are going to do is to open up why this is the case, and more importantly, where we can find hope in the midst of the dark. But right away there is one lesson from Mark that jumps out – there is not help or hope in denying the difficulty you are in. Mark is honest and then so should we be. So come Sunday we are looking at the book of Mark, darkness, and finding hope in the midst of difficulty.