Has God really hidden himself or are we unable to see God?
 

Truly, you are a God who hides himself…
—Isaiah 45:15a

We have all felt it. We pray and hear no response, we look for comfort and find nothing but gnawing pain, we wait for direction but experience only cloudiness, we seek for faith and find doubt skirting us like a skulking coyote. All we have done in the past to call forth the presence of the Holy One does not seem to bring any response whatsoever. God has become absent; God is nowhere to be found; God has hidden himself.

Has God really hidden himself or are we unable to see God because of the thick blanket of fog blurring our soul’s sight?

That fog creeps around us gradually, subtly, stealthily. We get busy and forget to pray, we get more concerned with having than giving, we allow work to crowd out the cry of our spirit, we loose our tongue in hurtful gossip, we become more interested in meeting our own needs than in showing love to others, we fill our days and nights with noise and find silence slipping away from us. We do not set out to wander away from the Holy One, but because we get diverted, our heart hardens like hot syrup dropped into a bowl of ice-cold water.

God is as present as ever, but to see God, we need to take our hard heart to the space of silence and let that sacred space be the hot breath that softens and melts us until we are clear liquid in the hand of heaven.

O God, wake me up when my life is closed in blindness to your presence.


Daily Vitamins for the Soul