Sunday, March 3, 2019

Absences


Missing You

            My wife left me!  Don’t take that the wrong way; she came back.  But the experience has got me thinking about absence.  Not just the absence of a wife.
           
            As the deer pants for streams of water,
                        so my soul pants for you, O God.
            My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
                        Where can I go and meet with God?
                                                Psalm 42:1-2
                       

            Sarah went to Italy to serve with Thrive Ministries.  I knew she would be gone sixteen days, and she came back when I expected (pretty close, anyway; she missed an airport connection, which necessitated an alternate flight).  Before we married, she spent two weeks in Japan and the Philippines.  Later this year she’ll go to Estonia.  I have to get used to a globe-trotting wife.

I say to God my Rock,
                        Why have you forsaken me?
            Why must I go about mourning,
                        oppressed by the enemy?
                                                Psalm 42:9

            What do we mean when we say, “I miss you”?  It varies from case to case, I suppose.  I can miss a wife, a student, or a friend.  We can miss places—an old home, a childhood neighborhood, or landscapes.  And there are more permanent losses: loved ones who died, a friendship broken, jobs lost, and opportunities wasted.  In each case there is pain, a hole in the heart. 
            When the loss is temporary, the pain of separation adds joy to the reunion.  It’s fun to kiss in airports!  With permanent losses—Sarah and I lost our first spouses to cancer—we may say time heals wounds, but it really doesn’t.  The loss stays with us; it becomes part of us.  A person’s interior life, the life of the heart, is complicated.  Sarah doesn’t have to quit missing Loren in order to commit to me. 

            My bones suffer mortal agony
                        as my foes taunt me,
            Saying to me all day long,
                        “Where is your God?”
                                                Psalm 42:10

            The spiritual life is complicated too.  At times we experience God’s presence like an electric current, at other times like a comforting embrace.  Exciting or reassuring, we rejoice when we fell God’s presence.  But there are other times, times when God seems distant or absent.

            Vindicate me, O God,
                        and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
            Rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
                                                            Psalm 43:1

            The pleasure the believer used to feel in prayer or study or worship has gone away.  She feels alone in a world of temptations, injustices, and mockery.  Even times of service, when she gives a cup of water in Christ’s name, seem hollow and useless.  Everything is pointless—at least it feels that way.
It’s important for Christians to understand that “dry” times are a normal part of the spiritual life.  I don’t say that everyone will experience the absence of God to the same degree, but it is common enough that no believer should be surprised by it.
Who would claim to know the mind of God completely?  Not I.  But it might help to consider some advantages of the felt absence of God.  First, absence teaches us to proceed in obedience rather than pleasure.  The beginner often needs special encouragement to start learning a language or practicing a skill, but later a good master will drop the constant reinforcement.  The protégé needs the discipline of “going on.”  
Second, and perhaps more important, the felt absence of God teaches us to trust.  We believe in God, and we believe he is working on us even when we don’t feel it.  Modern psychology can help us here, because we have all become familiar with the notion of the unconscious.  I don’t mean to endorse Freudianism or any other school of psychology in detail.  But we are used to the idea—and it seems almost certainly true—that our minds are complicated.  Our conscious thoughts and reasoning constitute the top layer; underneath are desires, drives, fears, and “forgotten” things.  The good news of Christ’s gospel is “taken in” by the conscious mind, but it also touches our inner selves.
In the dry times, then, we may remind ourselves that God’s Spirit has the power to work on us—to speak to us—at the unconscious level.  He has that power; we trust him to use it.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
            Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
            for I will yet praise him,
            my savior and my God.
                                    Psalm 42:5 (repeated in 42:11 and 43:5)