The Absence of God
I am sure that we all have experienced the absence of God in our lives. I have experienced this many times in my life, it is a lonely, desolate place.
Lewis Smedes eloquently addresses this in his book “When Goes on Leave of Absence”. He says this “If you have lived as long as I have, you have probably found yourself, now and then, in deep trouble and you asked God to help and He did not seem to hear. You knocked at His door and nobody was home. Gone on vacation. Heaven was silent.”
Let’s take a look at some places in the Bible where God was ‘absent’ -
In the Old Testament:
In the Garden of Eden when Satan tempts Eve to eat from the forbidden fruit.
Israelites enslaved in Egypt.
Years of wandering in the desert.
King David’s moral lapse.
In the New Testament:
Birth of Jesus- Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt because Herod wanted to kill Jesus. Many babies were slaughtered.
The error of the Jewish religious practices e.g. the unscrupulous money-changers.
The temptations of Jesus…. Satan’s voice “change the stones into bread.” Etc. (Matthew 4:1-11)
The cry of Mary, the sister of Lazarus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32)
The agonized cry of Jesus on the cross; “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27 v 46). Also, King David, one of the most beloved writers in the entire bible, in the very first verse of Psalm 22, asks the same question.
You and I may have felt like asking the same question sometime in our lives: My God, my God, why, why have You abandoned me?
Two possible conclusions:
A. Like a mother or father teaching their toddler to walk would, at some point let go of the toddler’s hand so that they can build the confidence in themselves.
B. That God is never actually absent, but that we are expecting something different from God.
There are probably many more reasons, perhaps take some time to meditate on this….
