Trapped in Darkness? You Have to Hear This NFL Player’s Message of Hope

Published: June 4, 2026

By Mallory Mattingly

Nathan Carter, a second year running back for the Atlanta Falcons, wants his social media followers to know that they have “A Friend in the Darkness.”

“Sometimes life is full of darkness. God doesn’t act as if the world isn’t broken and fallen,” the 24-year-old athlete wrote in an Instagram post. “Psalm 88 portrays a man named Heman who is going through a difficult time. He has no strength; his friends have abandoned him; he’s been forgotten; he is suffering; and he’s cried out to God to the point where his eyes are worn out from the tears. He feels rejected, ignored, and desperate for answers. At the end of the Psalm, he says: ‘Darkness is my only friend.'”

Carter continued: “Can you relate? Heman is not mincing his words. He is acknowledging the realities that he is going through. He is deeply honest, calling out to the ‘God of his salvation,’ who he knows can rescue him, but God is silent. He pleads for God to save him from death because he believed that death would separate him from what was most precious to him. His God.”

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Carter related to his followers, describing what it feels like to reach out to God but hear nothing in return.

“It seems that God has turned away from him. Have you felt that before? Where you’ve been praying and asking God for a miracle, and there is just silence and separation?” the running back asked. “The Lord invites us to pour out our hearts to Him in a raw and honest way. He is not scared of our desperate cries for help. And in the midst of the unanswered prayers, the Lord’s presence is near and seeking for us to draw closer to Him in faith despite the silence and unanswered questions.”

“Heman, like us, has no reason to fear, because despite the silence, Christ broke through it,” he emphasized. “The One whom we cry out to is the same One who suffered through this Himself. Jesus didn’t bypass the darkness. He entered into our darkness fully; Jesus was abandoned and rejected. He experienced the weight of my sin and yours, which separated Him from the Father on the Cross.”

Carter concluded with a final message of hope: that no matter how dark our life may get, God brings light, and He never leaves us.

“Yes, Jesus died, but He rose again! Christ descended into our darkness and emerged victorious,” he described. “Therefore He can identify our weakness and suffering. Because of Christ, darkness doesn’t get the final say. Death doesn’t get the final say. We may not have answers to our questions, and our suffering may not go away, but I know for certain that despite the hell that you are going through, that darkness is not your only friend. Oh, you have a friend available to you in the darkness; His name is Jesus.”

What a powerful reminder that even in our bleakest, most silent moments of suffering, we are never truly alone because Jesus entered the darkness to offer us an eternity with Him in heaven.

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