When God Seems Absent

by Timothy Howe

     Lord, how long with you forget me?
     Forever?
     How long will you hide Your face from me?
     How long will I store up anxious concerns within me,
        agony in my mind every day?
     How long will my enemy dominate me?

     Consider me and answer, Lord my God.
     Restore brightness to my eyes;
        otherwise, I will sleep in death.
     My enemy will say, "I have triumphed over him,"
        and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

     But I have trusted in Your faithful love;
        my heart will rejoice in Your deliverance.
     I will sing to the Lord
        because He has treated me generously.

                                                          Psalms 13 HCSB

Where are you, God?

Questioning God is an ancient tradition. Humanity has been questioning him since the beginning. This Psalm questions why God seems to remain absent in the life of His follower. David suffers from sorrow and wants help, but none seems to come from God. Where is He? What sort of character would ignore the pleas of His follower? Is David angry with God? Does he seem to doubt His existence?

Something else is happening in this Psalm. David demonstrated throughout his life that he has a steadfast faith in God. But he still is unsatisfied with God’s perceived “hiddenness” at this point in his life. Divine Hiddenness is a dominant theme throughout the first portion of the Psalms. Later Psalms respond to this question through the promise of hope that we have in Him.

By asking “How Long?” four times, David makes known his anxiety and fears due to God’s perceived inactivity. David demonstrates real boldness in his questioning. He speaks as if he was in the real presence of God. This indicates the nature of his relationship with the Divine. David was close enough to God that he could feel free to talk with him this way. This psalm also reveals how painful it was when he felt alienated from God.

Answer me

David is honest with God about his hurts and fears. His cries of “consider me” and “answer me” reveal the frankness with which David communicates with God and the urgency of the response needed.  He does not simply want God to notice his presence. He wants God to really take a deep long look at his situation. He feels like he is on the brink of annihilation and the purpose of his cries is to secure complete deliverance. He requests immediate rescue.

Loving Trust

The Psalm reveals that David's trust in the steadfast love of God is greater than his fears. The Hebrew word for steadfast love means more than emotional affections. It emphasizes loyalty at least as much as it does love. It is a word of commitment. It represents enduring loyalty and faithfulness to fulfill obligations because of a deep sense of love. God over and over again showed this love to the people of Israel and to David.

David is sure that the Lord will provide rescue from his situation. How can he have this depth of faith in the Lord even in times of His absence? David’s faith came from all the previous times he had seen the Lord work on his behalf. It is his deep ongoing relationship with the Lord, including past ups and current downs, that provided him opportunity to trust in the Lord again.

Wrestling with a sense of God’s Absence:

Many people live with a sense of absence of God in their lives. All people, even the most devout experience times where they sense an absence from the Lord. Even the atheist existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre mourned the sense of loss of the divine, stating that each human is “forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.” How much more does this sense of loss compound when felt by those who count on God’s activity in their lives?

This Psalm can help us to regain a sense of God’s presence by…

Voicing our complaint.

Whenever God seems absent, tell Him so. The reality is that in talking with Him, we acknowledge His presence in our lives and can sense His activity once again. Talk to God about how we don’t sense Him in our lives. Many people that don’t sense His presence tell it to other people. Focus that attention on Him. Do this through prayer, poetry, singing, reading scripture aloud. God was able to handle David’s complaint, along with many others in the Psalms. He can handles ours.

Focus attention away from ourselves.

Pity parties feed on self-pity which feeds on self-absorption. So turn your attention away from yourself and your problems and focus on others and their needs. This step alone pulls us out of isolation and aloneness which builds on the sense of the Absence of God. Amazingly, seeking the welfare of others opens us up to the gracious action of God in our lives as well as theirs.

Stay in the Community of Faith.

Spend time with God’s people. Standing shoulder to shoulder with fellow Believers strengthens my faith and theirs. When I hear songs of praise sung to God even when my heart seems silent of that praise His presence begins to well up in me again.

May You Experience the Divine Today.