Present yet absent

Sometimes do you just want to scream out "where are you God"? Screaming it at the top of your voice, venting every bit of breath from your lungs as if you needed to shout across some canyon? And then have you despaired at the lack of answer, longed for the immediate response?

And then you find, when you have allowed the echoes of your own voice to fade away, when you have stilled the bustle that engulfs you, in the tiniest whisper he says "I am here my child". For he does not need a booming voice, he does not need the PA and the loop for he was always standing right next to you. 

The God who promised through Moses that "he will never leave or forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6) is just there by you side. He never left.

My inspiration for this post was the fact that  I have been constantly present online (you have a great deal to answer for Mark Zuckerberg) and yet I have also been rather absent, the time since the last post proving the point. Bearing this in mind I started to think about the God who is ever present and yet (in our minds) sometimes absent.  How can we struggle to see, and communicate with, the God who is a hairs width away?

Some time ago I posted about fog, the fog that stops you seeing what is just in front of your nose. It doesn't help that the fog clings to you, imposes in on you, not just wetting your skin but darkening your soul. The fog can arouse fear and panic, isolating you from the ground in front of you and even your very own feet. How in the midst of this fog, real and spiritual, can we be expected to see anything, let alone God? In the midst of the fog, the world seems to have taken a leave of absence and it sometimes feels that way with God. 

The important thing about that passage from Deuteronomy above is that Moses says this twice. First (v6) he says it to the whole people and then, in their hearing, he says it to Joshua (v8). The story of the Bible is the story of people losing sight of the God who never went anywhere, and the ultimate story of God having to come to find them. 

I have spent a great deal of time recently trying to discern God's voice and I know now that I failed to listen for the "still small voice", the whisper of a God who did not need to shout. So what (in your mind) stands between you and God right now? Whatever it is, it is nothing to the God of creation, for nothing will ever get between you and the Lord. Spend some time today listening for the still small voice, making space for the whisper. You never know what you may hear.