When God Seems Distant
Originally Written August 30, 2009
Today, I read Mark 11-12
Point to Ponder:
- God is real, no matter how I feel.
Question to Consider:
- How do I intend to stay focused on God even when He feels distant?
This is a difficult question to try and answer as a seeker, but to do so I'm going to rewind about a year.
We started church-shopping not too long after we found out we were having a baby. We tried to bunch of places, none of which felt like a "good" match for us. We were on the verge of giving up completely when we came to Quest for the first time in June of last year.
We like it, so we kept coming back. Not too long after we got settled in, life started to fall apart at a particularly alarming rate.
My Dad had an ATV accident and almost died.
My wife's blood pressure shot up so high she had to go on complete bed rest.
Her aunt was killed in a car accident.
Our OB kept telling us various dire consequences to expect if our daughter came early, as it was getting more and more obvious she was going to do.
In the middle of all that, there wasn't really a lot of time for spiritual processing. In fact, more than one weekend went by where I heard the service, enjoyed it, but didn't feel anything even remotely similar to what the people around me seemed to be experiencing.
But we kept going back. I even went by myself a few weeks while my wife was on bed rest. I wasn't sure why, but I felt as though I should be there. Even at a point when God seemed about as distant from me as ever, I still felt driven for whatever reason to keep going to Quest, week after week.
When our baby finally arrived on September 16th, it was a light - a very bright, beautiful light - at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Despite all the worrying and worst-case scenarios, mama and baby were both fine.
I went downstairs at the hospital while they were napping, to get some fresh air and get out of the room for a while. On my way out the door, I noticed a little chapel off to the right of the hallway.
I pushed the door, and it opened. There was nobody else in there as made my way up to the front. I sat down and thought about everything that had happened.
It wasn't a place that I ever envisioned myself, but I felt like it was where I needed to be. Not knowing much about praying, I thanked God for a beautiful baby daughter and healthy wife, and the fact that we had just made it through the summer. It was easy to focus, for a change, on what was going well. God wasn't so far away, after all.
Verse of the Day
"For God has said, 'I will never leave you; I will never abandon you.'"
- Hebrews 13:5 (TEV)
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