Here is an honest confession. Almost certainly like you, I've prayed hard. I've looked for intimacy. And yet so often, especially when I need him most, God seems unresponsive. He seems so remote as to be irrelevant.
And it begs the question that maybe you hardly dare to ask: If God is love, if the stories of Jesus are true, then relationship must be at the very centre of his purpose for me. It must be the number one priority for Him. So then, why does He feel so far away? Why isn't He more obvious?
And why do I, like so many of us, like so many of those telling their stories in scripture, continue to put my trust in Him?
C.S.Lewis in the early stages of his grief, bereft of his wife, wrote this in his book, "A Grief Observed":
But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.
But later, after an agony of grieving, he wrote:
You are like the dog who imagines he is being dragged, when he is really being carried.
In fact, a while before his wife died, he had written this in his book, "Surprised By Joy":
Joy is not comfort ... but ... an ache of longing for something beyond this world.
That was something he already knew at one level, but that painful deeper longing for God, evoked by the death of his wife, was what drew him into a tighter relationship.
In Gethsemane, on his knees in an agony of pleading, Jesus prays, "If it be possible…", yet he receives no relief. Matthew 26:39
On the cross, wracked in pain and almost certainly semi-conscious, his mind goes to Psalm 22 and he repeats the opening words,
For certain, Jesus knows this Psalm end to end. Some time later he has understood that there is to be no divine rescue, just the silence, and surely his mind must find comfort in the words,
In Luke 24 13-32 we read about a man called Cleopas and his companion. It could be husband and wife, maybe the Clopas and Mary referred to in John 19. They are trudging along, in despair. They have lost a good friend. Someone who over the previous months had promised so much.
Freedom from oppression. A new way of life. The certainty of blessing. And his actions - defying the ruling elites, empowering the weak, coming alongside those pushed to the edges of society - those actions were challenging and difficult, but inspiring. And the way he was able to bring health and strength to those suffering through all kinds of illnesses and disabilities. It had seemed there was nothing he couldn't do. It is not overstating things to say that all their hope was in him. And they had watched him die.
And then a man joins them. He looks like a stranger to them. They are pretty sure they haven't met him before.
But he has this amazing grasp of Scripture, and progressively he works with them, explaining the books of Moses (Genesis to Deuteronomy) and the books of the Prophets, and shows them all the hints and future references to the life of the Messiah.
We don't know exactly what he spoke to them about but let's speculate for a moment!
Perhaps he pointed to the first promise made in Genesis 3 spoken to the satan-serpent ...
... and how the deliverer would defeat evil, but suffer in doing so.
Surely this stranger spoke about that event in Genesis 22 where Abraham told Isaac that God would provide a sacrifice. And how later Abraham was instructed by God to set Isaac free, and instead to sacrifice a ram. A ram you recall that was restrained by the horns in the undergrowth.
Maybe he talked about horns - that symbol of kingship. And the crown of thorns - a symbol both of kingship, and of the curse of genesis - the cursed ground growing thorns now in addition to food.
We can be certain this man referred to Exodus 12 where scripture explains how the pouring out of the life of the passover lamb brings deliverance and freedom.
And Leviticus 16 where the failure and wrongdoing of Israel is laid upon the head of a goat, who then carries it away into the desert.
Probably he talked about the event recounted in Numbers 21 where the instruction for those dying was simply to look at the bronze serpent, trusting that they would be spared death.
And we know that stranger was familiar with Psalm 22.
That psalm had been on his lips only two days earlier. Yes, he would have taken them through that verse by verse. The scriptures paint no clearer picture of the crucifixion.
Probably he explains to them that all this had to happen, and what the outcome would be from Isaiah 53.
They had never heard the scriptures taught like this. Perhaps like you and I, they had read it many times with their eyes not fully open.
Then perhaps he linked suffering with exaltation when reminding them of Daniel 7
By this time, surely they are beginning to see that the last few days of anguish and disappointment which seemed to be the catastrophic end of their hopes is actually the culmination of something long planned in the mind of God.
The two arrive at what is possibly their own house. The stranger apparently intends to go on, but they persuade him to stay. It is late in the day. "Stay here overnight," they say. "It's late. You can continue on tomorrow."
So they lay out some food and sit down together.
Then we read in Luke 24 that he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. I am quite sure a deliberate echo in the way Luke describes the last supper, just two chapter earlier in Luke 22.
And having had their eyes opened to see Jesus Christ in the scriptures, now just for a fraction of a second, they see him face to face.
Then without warning, he simply disappears.
It is a moment.
And Jesus intends those kinds of moments for you and I. If we will put aside our preconceptions about how we understand the scriptures, and freely allow the Holy Spirit to lead us as we read. And as we eat together both in ritual and in everyday ways with each other, then we will have those moments.
So often I want God to change my situation. But He wants to strengthen my spirit.
The measure of our relationship with God is not our feelings nor our circumstances, but our transformation.
And whenever we are in the agony of spiritual loneliness, just as in the case of the psalmist King David, and in the case of Jesus Christ, our Father in heaven wants to move us from...
... through to the words...
When we still show up to pray, we still love, we still worship, we still trust it may not feel like a miracle. But it is a deepening of faith. And everywhere, throughout scripture we find God the Father, or Jesus Christ the Son looking for those who will entrust everything to Him.
Job, David, Jeremiah, they all knew this silence in which their faith simply had to grow. To whom else could they turn? And you and I know that too, don't we?
It is okay to be real with our feelings of abandonment. When we whisper to ourselves, Where are you? Because this really doesn't feel enough, that is not a crisis of faith - that is the heartfelt cry for our faith to be nurtured by our Father.
And He hears it.
The miracle is not that every prayer was answered. The miracle is that you still love our Father and you still dare to trust Him, when it seems sometimes that He is not that bothered.
Dear Father, I don't understand why I have to feel so alone, even among my friends, in the midst of your silence. But I will sit with your Son in the garden anyway.
