God, Where in the Heaven are You?

Florida grandkids visit Washington D.C. recently.

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”
Have you ever felt that way? A man after God’s own heart (King David) is the source for the quote in Psalm 9:1.

David later laments in Psalm 13:1-6 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

I recall a six-month period after being fired from a job, God was silent. All of my prayer, my Bible reading, my desire to be a godly man didn’t give me a sense of God’s presence. It has been said that “if there is distance between you and God – guess who moved.” The implication being, you, not God, has become distant. Isaiah 59:2 corroborates this: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.” I wasn’t aware of any sin in my life. Why else could God be withdrawing a sense of His pressence from me?

God tells us in Isaiah 54:7-8 "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the LORD your Redeemer. I didn’t know of anything that God was made at me about.

Why was God distancing Himself from me causing me to feel abandoned? As John Trent so aptly states, “The process of discovery – of our struggling to deal with uncertainty and a lack of clarity – is actually a part of God’s nature and plan for us.”

Some answers in tomorrow’s post.