Into the darkness

The ambiguities are numerous and drive us to despair—almost. Yet the God of Israel does not leave us to ourselves. Even when He throws us into darkness, we know that it is His darkness, that we have been cast into it by Him. Thus we do not pretend to know His secrets or to understand His ways. Yet we are certain of knowing His name, of living by His love and receiving His grace, as we are certain of receiving His blows and dying according to His will. Such is our loyalty, a loyalty that lives as a surprise in a world of staggering vapidity, in an hour of triumphant disloyalty.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 270 (emphasis original)