Still There, Always There
Copyright 2004 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
We should no more assume that God has abandoned us when our good times turn to bad than we should assume the Sun has ceased to exist when clouds hide it from our sight. Trusting in the enduring presence of God in our lives is problematic for many believers. There are times in the life of all of us when we look to the sky and cannot see the "Sun of Righteousness."
Most Christians have a honeymoon period at the beginning of their walk with Jesus Christ. It is the golden time that often follows their conscious acceptance of Him. For weeks or months He truly feels "closer than a brother" and there is a wonderful sense of the nearness of God in the new believer’s life. But somewhere along the line something happens. It may be a personal tragedy that wakens them to the reality of pain and adversity still being present in their own existence. Sometimes it is the re-appearance of a habitual sin they thought God had forever removed from their being. Or maybe the everyday distractions of this world begin to take the Christian’s focus off of his newfound Lord. Whatever the reason the long sojourn on the mountaintop is over and the descent into the valley in which we live much of our earthly pilgrimage begins.
In this place the felt presence of God vanishes as if it were a fleeting mist blown away by a strong, unpleasant wind. The heavens become, as the Psalmist said, "like brass" and reflect back the frightened prayers of a confused believer who never thought this could happen. Where is God? Why has He left me? Will I ever know His presence again? The dark night of the soul descends for the first time and the new Christian realizes that she is not yet in Heaven but still living in a fallen world in which God will sometimes appear to have forsaken her.
He hasn’t. Jesus promises us that he will never leave or forsake us. This is the Word of almighty God.
So what accounts for the terrible sense of His absence in our lives that we at times experience? Indeed sometimes it is the result of our sin causing us to be the ones doing the withdrawing. But often times it is not. Job comes to mind; a man who was blameless and yet was on very intimate terms with feelings of abandonment, even persecution, from God. David, too, knew what it was like to sense a terrible void where the felt presence of the Lord once was. It is clear from some of the anguished psalms of "the man after God’s own heart" that this void was not always connected with known sin in his life. Apparently even the best of the Lord’s children experience times of seeming forsakenness.
Words like "seeming" and "felt" are the key to understanding the truth behind why we have periods when our senses fail to detect the comforting presence of God. Our senses are themselves fallen and imperfect. In this world we do see, as the Apostle Paul said, "through a glass darkly." Our perception of whether or not the Lord is truly with us is clouded by the veil that long ago fell over our cursed world. Sometimes, many times, in our Christian life He will appear to be absent when He is still very much present just beyond the reach of our senses, be they physical or spiritual. This is where we can learn true faith. This is where we come to have our own faith strengthened. When the clouds obscure our "Sun" we can believe that behind those temporal clouds is a steadfast God who still loves us and, therefore, is still very much with us. We learn to "believe in the darkness what we knew in the light." We do this by trusting in the promises of His Word.
Some bright day we who know Christ will be brought to a place where we will see Him face to face and "know Him even as we are known." In the meantime the storms of life and the fallen-ness of our world will continue to obscure Him to one degree or another. But our God is always with us. Once we know this truth it is up to us to seek Him despite the weather.