Encouragement

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Deus Absconditus?
or
Where Is God When We Need Him Most?


William, a colleague of mine, sat across the conference table from me as we waited for our committee meeting to begin. We were talking about prayer. "You know," he said, "when I learned that my wife had incurable cancer. . ." He paused and choking back his tears, said, "I prayed as I had never prayed before. But God seemed so far away from me. It felt like my prayers went nowhere, like God wasn't even there."

I felt like I knew just what he was talking about. The past couple of weeks have been some of the hardest ever for me. It was just two weeks ago that my wife told me she was divorcing me. When I have tried to pray and ask God for some comfort or help, I have felt a lot like William. Heaven has seemed closed to me. It has seemed like God was hiding.

I have felt this way before. Twenty years ago my first wife died of cancer. She was thirty-three years old. I cried out to God for help . . . and heard no response. It felt as though there was a great iron ceiling over my head and that God was hiding from me on the other side of that impenetrable vault. When I have described my experience, people have nodded in a knowing way. It seems that a lot of people recognize William's experience and mine. Maybe you have had similar experiences. Why is it that just when our need is the most real, God disappears on us and goes into hiding? Where is God when we need him most?

A wise person once said, "There is nothing new under the sun." And certainly this experience and these questions are far from original with me. The righteous Job cried to God, "Why do you hide your face, and count me as your enemy?" The Psalmist lamented, "Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" The prophet Isaiah declared, "Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior." In his hour of greatest need, even Jesus cried out, "My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me?"

Theologians, people who make it their profession to think about God, have puzzled over this phenomenon for a long time. They have even given a name to it. They call it "Deus Absconditus" "The Hidden God."

Does God hide from us in our times of trouble? It appears that He does. But why? What reason can there be for this particular example of "Deus Absconditus" "The Hidden God?" I have an idea about this.

Edward Dowden, the 19th century Irish Poet almost gets it in his aptly titled poem, Deus Absconditus.

Since Thou dost clothe Thyself to-day in cloud,
Lord God in heaven, and no voice low or loud
Proclaims Thee,--see, I turn me to the Earth,
Its wisdom and its sorrow and its mirth,
Thy Earth perchance, but sure my very own,
And precious to me grows the clod, the stone,
A voiceless moor's brooding monotony,
A keen star quivering through the sunset dye,
Young wrinkled beech leaves, saturate with light,
The arching wave's suspended malachite;
I turn to men, Thy sons perchance, but sure
My brethren, and no face shall be too poor
To yield me some unquestionable gain
Of wonder, laughter, loathing, pity, pain,
Some dog-like craving caught in human eyes,
Some new-wak'd spirit's April ecstacies;
These will not fail nor foil me; while I live
There will be actual truck in take and give,
But Thou hast foil'd me; therefore undistraught,
I cease from seeking what will not be sought,
Or sought, will not be found through joy or fear;
If still Thou claimst me, seek me. I am here.

Dowden almost gets it, but not quite. He makes the right turning from heaven to earth, but he just doesn't see what it is that appears before his eyes. As the Welshman R.S. Thomas puts it,

We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

Last week I had a phone call from my friend Ann. She is an elder at a church a few towns over from here and has worked with me on a couple of projects. "If I were there, I'd give you a hug." She said. And that, I would contend, is exactly the reflection that we cannot afford to miss in our times of trouble. I hear her words as if the word of God. "If I were there, I'd give you a hug."

My contention is this: In our times of deepest sorrow, our places of greatest pain, the God of Heaven seems absent, hidden as it were from our heavenward gaze, precisely because at those times God wishes to be found not so much in heaven, as right here on earth. In those unbearably difficult times, God graciously and humbly chooses to come to us, not as ineffable, immortal and invisible majesty, but as visible, mortal, touchable humanity. God comes to us in sisters and brothers, children and friends, in ways of which they are conscious and ways of which they are not. The people around us become the loving and comforting presence of God for us when we need God most. Those who we can see, whose touch we can feel, whose voices we can hear, each in their own unique way, become for us "the Word made flesh" the body of Christ, the fulfillment of God's heart's desire: "If I were there, I'd give you a hug."

Carved on the stone tabernacle of the high altar in the church of Gesù Nuovo in Naples, there is an inscription. "Deus absconditus heic": "Here is the Hidden God." In our times of trouble, the hidden God becomes the revealed God in and through the flesh and blood of the church. Where is God when we need him most? Look around you. See that one beside you - in front - behind? That is where God is when we need God most.

At a church board meeting a week ago I was overcome with grief. I could not keep my composure and I slumped in my chair and wept and sobbed for what seemed a long time. The elders of our church, the women and men chosen by the church to be our servant leaders, these elders rose from there places and came to me. I felt their strong, gentle hands on my shoulders. I felt the warmth of their embraces. I heard their sad but caring voices whispering words of comfort. Never have I felt more a part of the body of Christ. Never have I sensed a greater nearness of God. Never have I been so comforted.

So now I know where God is when we need God most. It is not in heaven. No. Look there and God will be hidden. Instead, God is here, in us, through us, and for us. When you are in trouble, look not to heaven, but look around you. "Deus absconditus heic": here is the Hidden God.

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