Growing in the Dark: The Hidden Gifts of Exile

Have you ever noticed what happens to a houseplant when you forget it in a dim corner of the room?

Most people assume it will simply wither. But often, something curious happens instead.

The plant, deprived of the abundant light it once knew, does not die. It changes. Its stems stretch longer, reaching with an almost desperate elegance toward whatever sliver of light finds its way through the blinds. Its roots, unable to draw strength from photosynthesis alone, dig deeper into the soil, searching, anchoring itself more firmly in its pot, gathering nutrients.

Botanists have a name for this: etiolation.

And when such a plant is finally returned to the sun, though it may look pale and lanky at first, it possesses a root system and a hunger for light that surpasses those plants which had never endured the shadows.

The soul, it seems, is not so different.

 

A Prophet in a Foreign Land

The book of Daniel opens not with a triumph but with a tragedy. Judah has fallen. Jerusalem has been besieged. The finest young men of noble Israelite families, Daniel among them, have been marched into Babylon, stripped of their names, and enrolled in the royal academy of a pagan king.

Their food is unclean. Their tongue is foreign False gods are everywhere. And it feels, at least at first, that their God is absent. Almost as if He'd abandoned them.

Yet at the end of the first chapter, we read that at least a few faithful men remained, and God continued to bless them with spiritual gifts.

"To these four young men God gave knowledge and skill in every aspect of literature and wisdom; Daniel also had insight into all visions and dreams" (Daniel 1:17).

Notice where God chose to give these gifts. Not in the temple courts of Jerusalem. Not in the comfort of the land that had been promised to Abraham and ruled by David.

God poured out His charisms in Babylon. In exile. In a land where every cultural pressure was arranged against the faithful. In the very place that seemed most abandoned by God, God was most generous.

The Hebrew word used here for “gave” is nātan, a simple, common verb, but in this context it carries the weight of divine initiative. God did not merely permit these gifts to develop. He actively placed them there, like a gardener planting seeds in soil no one else would think to till. And the location of that planting is precisely the point.

 

The Paradox of Divine Timing

There is a mystery at the heart of the spiritual life that Scripture returns to again and again: God’s greatest gifts often arrive in our darkest seasons. In Genesis, Joseph is given his prophetic wisdom in a Pharaoh’s dungeon. Moses learns to lead in the wilderness of Midian. Paul writes his most luminous letters from prison cells. John receives the Apocalypse on the barren island of Patmos.

Why does God so often work this way?

Saint John of the Cross, in his classic treatises on the spiritual life, explains that union with God requires two distinct purifications: the night of the senses and the deeper dark night of the spirit.

In the night of the senses, God weans us from our dependence on emotional sweetness, devotional highs, and familiar spiritual comforts. The external scaffolding falls away. But in the night of the spirit, the stripping goes far deeper: God purges our very faculties: our intellect, memory, and will. Our conceptual frameworks shatter, our past securities dissolve, and our self-reliance is undone.

In both movements, God appears to withdraw. Consolations dry up. Prayer feels arid. The soul feels cast into an exile of its own making. Yet John insists this apparent absence is not abandonment, but a passive purification: a work of pure divine initiative that we could never achieve by our own effort. “The dark night,” he writes, “is an inflow of God into the soul which purges it from its ignorances and imperfections” (Dark Night of the Soul, Book II, ch. 5).

What feels like abandonment is actually the deepest kind of embrace.

By blinding the intellect, God installs a pure faith that no longer relies on human understanding; by emptying the memory, He awakens a radical hope anchored only in Him; and by stripping the will, He forms a charity untainted by self-interest.

In such seasons, faithfulness becomes something entirely new. It is no longer sustained by emotional affirmation, cultural support, or the visible fruits of religious life. It is sustained only by love that has learned to walk in the dark. And this, precisely this, is the soil in which God plants the greatest charisms.

 

Baptismal Seeds

While I don't want to open up a can of theological worms to debate here, many relatively new Christian traditions treat Baptism as little more than an outward ritual, a symbolic entrance ticket, or a public declaration of personal intent. But Scripture presents it as something far more radical and substantial: an actual, ontological burial and a real infusion of divine life.

Not as our work, but as God's work in us.

When the Apostle Paul speaks of this mystery, he uses the language of real union in death and resurrection:

"Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3–4).

Baptism is not an empty symbol; it is the “washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). In those waters, God places the imperishable seed of His own life within us (1 Peter 1:23) and incorporates us into the Body of Christ by that same Spirit:

"For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body... and we were all made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13).

From that single fountainhead, God implants specific supernatural endowments into every believer: "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone" (1 Corinthians 12:4–6).

Yet in many souls, these gifts/charisms lie dormant. Unwatered, unrecognized, buried beneath the surface, waiting.

Here is the mystery we so often miss: many such seeds do not sprout in comfort on a sunlit shelf. They sprout in the darkness of the earth—buried, crushed, pressed on all sides, and enveloped in what looks like absolute finality. A seed kept in safety remains isolated and sterile. It must undergo the physical reality of the soil before the latent power within it can break open.

Jesus Himself pointed to this exact paradox as the law of the Kingdom:

"Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

The burial of our baptism is not a metaphor meant to stay in the font. God permits our seasons of exile, dryness, and pressure so that the subterranean life He planted in us can finally crack through the husk of our self-sufficiency.

 

The Gifts That Grow Crooked

Yet we must be honest about something. Not everything that grows in the dark grows in perfect health. A plant reaching for scarce light will often grow crooked, spindly, uneven. Its shape betrays the difficulty of its origin.

The same is true of our gifts. Charisms cultivated in seasons of exile often bear the marks of that exile. As an author, most of my craft was developed in years of spiritual wandering. My early novels under a different pen name, many of them I'm not all that proud of today, were written with an eye toward self-glory and profit. In the darkness, for a season, I'd lost sight of the light.

But the light had not lost sight of me.

A leader may develop capacities in the wilderness that, when first exercised, are used for ambition rather than service. An artist may hone his or her technique in the dark, only to find that early creations celebrate what should have been mourned.

Sadly, some of my early books glorified worldly values that I didn't even agree with at the time. Why? Because I'd sold myself out for profit. Looking back at it, though, I can see God's had even in those efforts that were mixed with sinful motives.

This is not cause for despair. I do not suppress my old books, even though I'm somewhat embarrassed of them, because they continue to draw people into my newer work. And because we do not overcome our past by covering it up. The change God works in us, the growth He gives us, become more brilliant when we allow the darkness of what once beset us to become on occasion for the light to shine all the brighter. For me, this season of my life, how unfaithful I was despite never totally abandoning my faith, now is a source of humility, and a cause to wonder at the patience of God and His unwavering love.

For God is not merely a gardener. He is a redeemer. And what He develops in us during exile, even when we develop it imperfectly, even when we misuse it, He does not throw away. He refines. He redirects. He redeems.

Consider the striking words of the prophet Joel, spoken to a people who had lost everything to a plague of locusts: "I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). God does not merely forgive the lost years. He repays them. He gathers up what was consumed and gives it back, transformed.

 

Echoes of Exile

Here is one of the most beautiful mysteries of grace: the very gifts we developed imperfectly in our darkness can become, in God’s hands, the exact instruments He uses to reach others still in that same darkness.

The one who has wandered can speak to wanderers with a credibility no one else possesses. The one who has doubted can meet doubters where they are. The one who has created art (be it novels, songs, or paintings) for the wrong reasons can, once redeemed, reach those still in the darkness, because the language of that darkness is a language they still share.

This is why Saint Paul was so effective in preaching to Gentiles: his years of persecuting the Church were not wasted, but were transformed into a passion for the very people he once opposed. "For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).

He was once a persecutor. And he speaks the Gospel to persecuted people. He even, then, stands as a beacon of hope and compassion, that the people of God might have mercy and even pray for those who persecute them still.

Grace does not erase our history. It integrates our history into our vocation.

 

The Faithfulness of God When Ours Wavers

Perhaps the most consoling word in the story of Daniel is a word not written but implied. Daniel resolved not to defile himself. He kept faith in exile. But how many exiled Israelites did not? How many, in Babylon, forgot the Lord, married into pagan families, adopted foreign gods, disappeared into the anonymity of assimilation? Scripture does not say.

But it does say that even to these, God remained faithful. The return from exile, when it came, was offered to all who would come.

Saint Paul writes: "If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

There is a difference between a season of exile in which we remain faithful and a season of exile in which our faithfulness wavers. But God works in both. He can bring us home from either. And He can even use the crooked growth of our unfaithful years, once redeemed, to reach others who need to hear from someone who has been where they are.

 

Living This Truth

How, then, do we live in light of this?

First, if you are in exile now, do not curse the darkness. Whatever season of dryness, hiddenness, or spiritual struggle you find yourself in, do not assume God has abandoned you. He is planting. He is watering. He is developing gifts in you that could not have grown any other way. Your task is simply to remain, to keep turning toward whatever light you can perceive, however faint. Fidelity in the darkness is worth more than all the exuberant works of a soul that has never known the shadows.

Second, look at your past exiles with new eyes. What did you learn in the desert years? What capacities did you develop, even imperfectly, even for the wrong reasons? Bring them to God now. Ask Him to redeem them, to reorder them toward His glory. What was cultivated in darkness can, with grace, flourish in light.

Third, do not despise your crooked growth. If you are aware that gifts you developed in exile were used for lesser ends, take comfort. You are not the first. Repent where needed, yes. But do not throw away the gift because it was misused. The gift itself is God’s. He gave it. And He can retrieve it and redirect it toward its proper purpose.

Fourth, become a witness to those still in exile. The people who need what God has cultivated in you are often those still walking through the very darkness you have left behind. Do not hide the fact of your exile from them. Do not present a sanitized story of a soul that never struggled. Let your history speak, honestly and humbly, so that those still lost may hear a voice they can trust.

That last one is deeply personal. I write Christian fiction today. But so many Christian authors have an audience of people who are already Christians, just looking for a "clean" form of entertainment. Precisely because of my period of exile, though, thousands of readers have followed me (and continue to do so) from my previous work to what I'm writing today. I receive e-mails every day from people who once dwelled where I was, and are now seeking God more deeply than ever before. This is not because of me. It's because of the journey and exile God pulled me through. Have I lost some readers in the transition? Definitely. I hear from them, too. But was it worth it? Every season of harvest involves a sifting of a sort, and the fruit that results is worth the sacrifice.

Finally, give thanks. Give thanks not only for the light but for the darkness through which you have passed. Give thanks for the roots that grew deep only because the light was scarce. Give thanks for a God whose faithfulness precedes ours, sustains ours, and outlasts our failings.

For in the end, the plant does not save itself. The gardener does. And the gardener who planted us in exile, watered us in tears, and shaped us in silence is the same gardener who now, in due season, is bringing us into the sun.

Praise be to Him alone who draws His beloved to Himself even through exile.