The Descent

The Descent

I never meant to lose the light. It happened slowly, like a sunset stretched across years, creeping downward until the world around me was more shadow than day. Some say that God’s love is like the sun, always shining, always present, but I found myself in places where that light couldn’t seem to reach.

It started with doubts. Not the kind that whisper, but the ones that gnaw. How do they know? The elders, the teachers, the preachers, they spoke with certainty, but certainty is a fragile thing. It crumbles when pressed too hard. Had I been fooled? Were the grand stories just illusions passed down, polished by repetition? The Bible, the trials, the Crusades, the church itself, were they tools to mold belief, or chains to bind thought?

I walked deeper. At first, the dimness was comforting. It let me escape the judgment of men, the self-righteous who declared truth and condemned those who questioned. But the deeper I went, the thinner the light became, like dying embers. Soon, there was nothing at all. In the pitch black, creatures lurked, not beasts, but ideas. Corruptions. Fears. They whispered of hypocrisy, of control, of deception. Has God abandoned me? Or did I abandon Him?

Then came the heat beneath my feet.. The core of the earth, the molten heart of fire, it is a place where shadows cannot exist, for there is only flame. Souls burn here, not from punishment, but from the choice to never turn back. The deeper one goes, the less room there is for shadow, for here, at the core, there is only fire. Molten metal churned, destruction and suffering feeding the place where belief turned to hatred. There was no shadow here, only a void where lost souls burned, unable to ascend.

A thought surfaced, weak but persistent: Was I ever truly lost? Had I spent so much time rejecting belief that I had forgotten to search for truth?

I reached upward, clawing at stone. The climb was steep, my hands bloodied, but as I neared the surface, flickers of warmth touched my skin. Doubt did not vanish, perhaps it never would. But something remained, something undeniable.

When I finally stood again in the open, the sun greeted me, unchanged. It had not moved, had not faltered. It had never abandoned me.

It was only waiting.