Today's Scripture:
The women, who had come with him out of Galilee, followed after, and saw the tomb, and how His body was laid. They returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.??
--Luke 23:55-56
God can be maddeningly hard to get. When God says that His ways are not our ways, He really means it (Isaiah 55:8).
We have these encounters with Him where He breaks into our lives with power and answers our prayers and wins our trust and waters the garden of our faith, making it lush and green.
And then there are these seasons when chaos careens with apparent carelessness through our lives and the world, leaving us shattered. Or an unrelenting darkness descends. Or an arid wind we don¡¯t even understand blows across our spiritual landscape, leaving the crust of our soul cracked and parched. And we cry to God in our confused anguish and He just seems silent. He seems absent.
Many great saints and characters from Scripture have experienced what has been described as the "long dark night of the soul," among them:
Job: ¡°I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.¡± (Job 30:20)
King David: ¡°My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.¡± (Psalm 22:1¨C2).
Many great saints suffered greatly from a sense of God's absence, among them St John of the Cross, St Therese of Lisieux, and especially the greatest known saint of the Twentieth Century: Mother Teresa. One can only imagine the experiences of the unknown saints--those relegated to Nazi or Stalinist or other communist death camps and others whose lives and expectations came apart at the seams--and all others whose faith and perseverance in the presence of severe temptation to abandon all hope lasted for agonizingly long periods of time.?
What of those in many parts of the world with that experience at this very moment?
And--although we ?can only imagine the experience of the apostles on the original Holy Saturday--from the time Jesus died on the cross on Friday to the time the empty tomb was discovered Sunday morning--we can imagine Peter and the disciples suffering a similar despair and questioning of their faith. The one they had left everything to follow--the one whom they called "Teacher" and "Lord" and "Master"--the one for whom they had such high hopes and dreams and aspirations--He lay forever, for all they knew, stone cold in a sealed and guarded tomb.
They remained together in a locked room--but they did so out of fear of those who had crucified Jesus coming for them next. We know that at least one among them--Thomas--would not believe again until Jesus personally appeared to him and offered him the opportunity to touch His wounds. We can only marvel that the others apparently never completely abandoned hope and were ready to receive Jesus joyfully when He did appear--in spite of how hopeless their time and circumstance seemed.
Atheists will tell us that the reason God seems silent is because he¡¯s absent. ¡°No one¡¯s home at that address. Duh.¡±
In the silent suffering seasons we can be tempted to believe it. Until we step back and take a look and see that existence itself is not silent. It screams God (Romans 1:20). As Parmenides said, and as Maria sang in The Sound of Music, ¡°Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.¡±
Believing atheism on its own terms is like moderns believing in a flat earth. ¡°From where I stand, it doesn¡¯t look like God is there.¡± Right. And if you only trust your limited human perceptions, the world looks flat. The only reason you know the world is round is because of authoritative scientific revelation and many corroborating testimonies.
For a time, scientific discoveries seemed to favor an atheist perception of reality. Ancient misunderstandings of the way things "worked"--often referenced in Scripture---challenged our faith in its overall reliability as a blueprint for God's relationship with us and for our salvation, and especially challenged our belief in miracles.
More recent scientific discoveries--from the Big Bang (the universe being created and having a finite existence); to the realization that the universe is so "fine tuned" for the existence of life through the most amazingly infinitesimally narrow parameters of possibility per scientific understanding of how the "laws" of physics and chemistry work, making a "natural" (i.e., non-theistic) explanation extremely unlikely without intelligent design; to current models of "reality" based on quantum theory that suggest that what we perceive as "reality" might best fit the model of our living in a "simulation"--suggesting that we "exist" in the construct of a hyper-intelligent "mind."
None of this is absolute proof and none negates one's reliance on faith for the theist or the atheist, but it does all point in the direction of a God who created it all and with whom we are invited to pursue a relationship with. In that pursuit--per God's invitation--He stands ready to reveal Himself to us (Deuteronomy 4:29; 1 Chronicles 28:9; 2 Chronicles 15:2-3; Psalm 25:12,14; Psalm 34:3-9; Psalm 145:18-19; Proverbs 2,3-6; Proverbs 8:17; Jeremiah 29:13; Lamentations 3:25; Matthew 6:31-33; Luke 11:9-13; Acts 17:24-28; Hebrews 11:6; James 4:6-8; Revelation 3:20; Revelation 21:6).
But back to our perceptions: what we experience as God¡¯s absence or distance or silence is phenomenological. It¡¯s how we perceive it. It¡¯s how at some point it looks and feels but it isn¡¯t how it is. Just like we can experience the world as flat when we¡¯re walking on a huge spinning ball, we can experience God as absent or distant when ¡°in Him we live and move and have our being¡± (Acts 17:28).
In reality, God wasn¡¯t absent or silent or indifferent at all toward Job or King David or the saints or the apostles. It¡¯s just how it felt to them at a particular time. Nor, in reality, is God silent toward us when our experience of His presence is lacking. When we feel forsaken by God we are not forsaken (Hebrews 13:5). We are simply called to trust the promise more than the perception.
But why the Silence? ?Why does it need to feel that way? Why the perceived silence? Why can it seem like God is playing hard to get or like He¡¯s just standing there looking at us when we cry to Him for help?
I don¡¯t claim to understand all the mysteries of this experience. No doubt we underestimate the effects of remaining sin on us and our need for this discipline in order to share God¡¯s holiness (Hebrews 12:10). But I believe there are clues for another purpose as well. I¡¯ll phrase them as questions.
Why is it that ¡°absence makes the heart grow fonder¡± but ¡°familiarity breeds contempt¡±?
Why is water so much more refreshing when we¡¯re really thirsty?
Why am I almost never satisfied with what I have, but always longing for more?
Why can the thought of being denied a desire for marriage or children or freedom or some other dream create in us a desperation we previously didn¡¯t have?
Why is the pursuit of earthly achievement often more enjoyable than the achievement itself?
Why do deprivation, adversity, scarcity, and suffering often produce the best character qualities in us while prosperity, ease, and abundance often produce the worst?
Do you see it? There is a pattern in the design of deprivation: Deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens desire. And the more heightened the desire, the greater its satisfaction will be. It is the mourning that will know the joy of comfort (Matthew 5:4). It is the hungry and thirsty that will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6). Longing makes us ask, emptiness makes us seek, silence makes us knock (Luke 11:9).
Deprivation is in the design of this age--of our experience here on earth. We live mainly in the age of anticipation, not gratification--or rather, not lasting gratification. Gratification of our senses is always an ephemeral experience. If we pursue it for its own sake it can lead us to madness of covetousness, obsession and addiction to things of this world, chasing an impossible dream by ever more desperately perverse means. We live in the dim mirror age, not the face-to-face age (1 Corinthians 13:12).
The paradox is that what satisfies us most in this age is not what we receive, but what we are promised. Gratification and fulfillment and the peace that surpasses all understanding come to us in self-emptying and self-denial, not for its own sake either but in surrender to God and His purposes and in seeking the fulfillment of His Kingdom in loving service to Him and others for His sake--yet this experience can be transitory as well. The chase is better than the catch in this age because the Catch we¡¯re designed to be satisfied with is in the age to come.
And so Fredrick William Faber wrote in his poem ¡°The Desire of God¡±:
Yes, pine for thy God, fainting soul! ever pine;
Oh languish mid all that life brings thee of mirth;
Famished, thirsty, and restless ¡ª let such life be thine ¡ª
For what sight is to heaven, desire is to earth.
(Thank God for poets and songwriters!)
So you desire God and ask for more of Him and what do you get? Stuck in a desert feeling deserted. You feel disoriented and desperate.
Don¡¯t despair. The silence, the absence is phenomenological. It¡¯s how it feels, it¡¯s not how it is. You are not alone. God is with you (Psalm 23:4). And He is speaking all the time in the priceless gift of His objective word so you don¡¯t need to rely on the subjective impressions of your fluctuating emotions.
If desire is to earth what sight is to heaven, then God answers our prayer with more desire. It¡¯s the desert that awakens and sustains desire. It¡¯s the desert that dries up our infatuation with worldliness. And it¡¯s the desert that draws us to the Well of the world to come.
The disciples--for these reasons and/or for whatever other reasons suited God's purpose--needed to experience this. They needed time to mourn and to reflect on the meaning of their experience. They needed to learn patience and perseverance in the face of adversity. They needed to learn to maintain hope and faith and trust in Jesus and His word when all were severely challenged. They had to process both their emotions and their shattered expectations of what their life with Jesus on this earth would be like.
Jesus, of course, had given abundant warnings of what was to transpire, but they had only heard what they wanted to hear and had failed to process all that He had said. Would we have been any different? Considering the radical challenges of the Gospel versus what we are generally willing to process and accept of it, are we any different today?
The good news: Jesus--who had insight into all their faults and failings--Jesus who was aware that they would fail their first really severe test--Jesus who knew that Peter would deny Him, that Thomas would demand extraordinary proof, and that all would desert Him in His hour of need--had nonetheless, at His last supper, pronounced them--all of them, except Judas the conniving betrayer--CLEAN! All the other apostles would learn from their shortcomings and failings and, through faith in God and His grace, go on to lead extraordinary lives guided and empowered by God's Holy Spirit. They would still have their faults and failings--the Book of Acts references some of them--and all except John, who died in exile after a long life, would be martyred for standing by the faith that they testified to.
But back to us: what if we didn't know the end of the story? What if, like the apostles, we feel overwhelmed by darkness and the absence of the perception of God's presence? What of the horrible things that go wrong in our lives and in the lives of those near and dear to us? I can't offer answers to how things will play out for any of us--not even for myself--but I can reference the fact that the experience is a common--and even a necessary--matter for us to endure; to quiet our minds and to still our hearts and to reflect on God's word even when we do not sense His presence. That seems to be the place where God often speaks to us--if only He finds us listening and willing to hear Him, trust in Him, and follow where He would lead us. But there is still that time of waiting and enduring--just as the first Holy Saturday was for the followers of Jesus. ?
(This reflection was adapted from "When God Seems Silent" by John Bloom. I bear the sole burden of responsibility for all alterations and adaptations of this work and any misunderstandings or ?other mistakes derived from such).
