Interesting.

These are the words that are most common on this blog - I like what we talk about ;)

Andrew

When God is missing.

I remember a time where God was missing. One day He was there, the next He wasn’t showing up in the usual ways. Over time, I began to get more and more distressed. I started to recreate situations where God had showed up before, and nothing happened. I prayed, I tithed, I served – I did everything I knew to do and God was still missing. I begged God to show up.

I wondered if God was punishing me for something I had done – maybe He was giving me the silent treatment. I wondered if there was some lesson that God wanted me to learn – was this my hint? I scanned my memory furiously, hoping for a clue in to God’s absence. Somehow, I must not have been living up to what He desired.

Or, maybe this was all just part of His plan for me. Maybe my suffering would be the tool he used to make events turn out the way He wanted them to. It got to the point where I began to wish I could just get to heaven already – God doesn’t ignore you there. God’s silence lasted for almost two years.

What I didn’t know then was that my experience has been shared by people throughout the ages; many more spiritual than I – Mother Teresa even. I don’t know why, but I take comfort in that. It has been called all sorts of things, like “The Dark Night of the Soul”, “Spiritual Desert”, “The Cloud of Unknowing”….

Richard Foster has this to say about it,

“I want you to know that to be faced with the “withering winds of God’s hiddenness” does not mean that God is displeased with you, or that you are insensitive to the work of God’s Spirit, or that you have committed some horrendous offense against heaven, or that there is something wrong with you, or anything. Darkness is a definite experience of [the spiritual life]. It is to be expected, even embraced.”

I’m glad to hear what he says the Dark Night of the Soul is not. I’m even glad to hear that I should expect it to happen to me – and then I get to ‘embraced’. Embracing time where God is absent is hard to wrap my head around, if there is no purpose to it.

But, I don’t think the Dark Night of the Soul is without purpose.

There are some things that God can only say through His silence. Silence weans me off loving the God I am prone to make in my image. God’s silence asks the forming question, “Is it [blank] that you love, or is it Me?” Insert the blank with even the most noble and righteous of things – morning quiet times, serving the poor, prayer, Bible studies…anything can be that blank if it replaces God for the central place.

But, I don’t think God is some giant narcissist in the sky, demanding my constant attention. God brings me back to Him for my sake – because God is the only one who satisfies. Morning quiet times, serving the poor, prayer, Bible studies… none of these are what I need – they only bring me to Him.

And, more good news, during this time of silence, God hasn’t paused the good work He has promised to do in us. George Macdonald paints the picture this way, and I can’t help but keep coming back to it. This is why I embrace God’s silence:

“To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can only be aware of in the results…In the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness. With his holy influence, with his own presence…He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request – has answered it, and is visiting his child.”

I imagine God working deep within me, on levels and in places I am not yet conscious of. They are so deep down, so in need of healing, that I can’t hear God speak as He normally does – but as those points of redemption are brought closer to the surface, then I can expect healing. And, I can expect the God I was waiting for.