Sunday, May 20, 2012

"The Absence of God"

From The Gospel According to Job by Mike Mason:
"Even as Job confesses His faith in the living God, he matter-of-factly accuses this God of deserting him, of leaving him in the lurch. It is as if God, though alive, might as well be dead. Nevertheless Job appeals to this silent, absent God as one whose living reality remains entirely beyond question, one whose existence is more certain than his own. (Job 27:2) ... Faith is the ability to tolerate the intolerable paradox of God's clear and undisputed title as Lord of the universe in spite of His apparent absence. Some might prefer to see faith as an awareness of God's presence, the discerning of His hand at work in our lives.But what of all the times we cannot see any hand at all? Sometimes the Lord touches us directly. But often He works through secondary agents - through other people, through created things, through life experiences both good and bad - and in such cases we may not be aware of His involvement until long afterwards, if at all. This is when pure faith is called for, faith reduced to simplest terms. "When you cannot practice the presence of God,"  wrote C.S. Lewis, "then it is something to practice the absence of God."