Deus Absconditus - The God who is hidden

I'm finding words for my heart in the writings of Richard Foster's book Prayer. It is a seemingly odd thing that the God who is ever present would remove Himself from our conscious awareness, causing us to feel abandoned, dry, lonely, empty, and dull. Or perhaps a better explanation is that we feel nothing. It is difficult for those who have felt the presence and relationship of God to feel nothing. All I can think about is how to reestablish that awareness. I try everything I can - pray more, read more, fast more, sleep more, work harder at ministry -to prove to God that I am worth it. Why God do you force us to go through this? Why don't you respond to my beck and call and come rescue me? Life feels dull and full of nothing without you. Things in the past that had brought so much pleasure are empty. But what I'm realizing is that actually I asked God to bring me to this place. I've been praying for humility for a long time, and I'm struggling with the reality that I can't do everything - I can't be a lone cowboy making the world go round. Frankly, it's just not how I thought God would do it, which actually assures me that it is God who is doing it.

I'm learning now that it's ok for me to just talk to God about how I'm feeling, tell Him I'm lonely and pissed, rather than work myself into some spiritual fervor so I can "commune with the all mighty creator." I'm learning to pray again. I'm learning to take off the mask that I wear for the world and for God and just be ok with how I feel. I love Foster's explanation of the Lament Psalms:

The Lament Psalms teach us to pray our inner conflicts and contradictions. They allow us to shout out our forsakenness in the dark caverns of abandonment and then hear the echo return to us over and over until we bitterly recant of them, only to shout them out again. They give us permission to shake our fist at God one moment and break into doxology the next.

I'm a relatively self aware person, and I know how I'm supposed to feel or what the logical conclusions are so, so I try to force myself to feel that way before interacting with God. But since I'm stuck in the dessert, I just don't have the energy to even try getting myself into shape. The best that I can do is talk to God, tell Him where I am, and move on with my day. I rarely have the energy to pray for other people or other events. I'm desperate and the only thing I'm concerned about is me - I want to be restored, fixed, rescued. I don't want to feel this way any more. I want to feel like progress is being made, that things are getting better. Someone once said "When it was day I wished for night, and when it was night I wished for day." Yup, that about sums it up.

It's interesting that my devotional this morning talked about the Russian word poustinia which means dessert, but is also the name given to the wooden hut where someone is shut away for time alone with God. Apparently, it is a common experience to feel like nothing is happening while you are shut in the poustinia. It is upon emerging that you realize the transformational work that has been done. How I long to emerge from the poustinia, mostly because I want out of the desert.

Foster's final advice is to wait on God. Don't try and pretend to have faith. Just trust that God is God. I can say that God is good and that God loves me. I don't know why it has to be done this way, but it does. So wait in the desert, Joel. It's never permanent although it often feels like it will never end.

"O my God, deep calls unto deep. The deep of my profound misery calls to the deep of your infinite mercy." Bernard of Clairvaux

How do you tell her you love her?

So it's Thanksgiving and my family is all home together for a couple days. I'm letting someone stay at my place for the Kubu's and I'm actually crashing at my parents place. I'm the oldest of three siblings and my sister and I don't have the greatest relationship. There isn't really any specific event that precipitated things but my family has experienced a lot of emotional trauma and so there are some things mixed into it. This last year I have been intentionally trying to repair my relationship with my sister - I would go up to Portland, give her a call about once a week, and try to be extra thoughtful about how we interacted. I never did it out of duty but really because I love my sister a lot and really desire a better relationship with her. Since my move to Eugene, I haven't done a very good job of staying in touch with her - Portland's a lot further away and gas is so expensive, and I haven't taken the time to call her each week. There isn't really any excuse to be honest.

So today at breakfast it all came out and apparently it's been really hurtful to Hannah. The hard part is that I really do love her and I am really sorry for it. This job transition has been hard with long hours and high stress - I don't have a lot of relational energy left at the end of the day. But as Hannah so icily pointed out to me, that's not really a legitimate excuse. I agree with her - she is after all my sister.

I don't really know where I'm going with all of this. I just needed to write it down somewhere. I love my sister a lot and pay attention to the direction her life is taking - I really want her to discover the plans that God has for her. I know she doesn't really understand Jesus very well right now but I am holding on to hope that she will discover the healing and hope that Jesus brings into our lives. But it's more than that - it's the purpose. I see her gifts and know that she will do incredible things in this life. I love that she is studying nursing, that she is traveling to Tanzania, that she ran the Portland Marathon, and so many other things. I hope that she discovers that God loves the poor, the orphaned, and the widowed.

I guess that's all. I know I've not done the best I could. I wish I could figure out how to make it up to her.

Jesus and Skunky Beer

Today I am taking a Sabbath - the second one in as many weeks which has been a wonderful thing to reintroduce into my life. I find that for an introvert Sabbaths can be a critical place to recharge (although I'm also learning that it isn't helpful to come into a Sabbath wasted).

So I'm at this place in my life where I'm 25, I'm in a brand new position, in a new city, and everything feel really fragile. It doesn't help that all my friends are getting married or dating someone at this point, and I'm still sitting here single trying to convince myself that it's okay (and at times, it really is okay!). But when there are so many new things in my life, it is easy to become OCD on the things that I think will help (such as a girlfriend, a new bike, exercise, more money, being funded), that the world throws at me all shining and glimmering like the best-wrapped Christmas present.

Tonight though, God spoke to me about those things through a bottle of beer - a large bottle actually - an Imperial pint. Now, I've been saving this beer since last Christmas. It is bottled up in Canada in a special way such that the flavor actually improves with age - some monks invented the method way back. So I thought I would hang onto it until an appropriate time. Today I was really craving a beer and it's my Sabbath so I popped this baby open. I had cooked myself a delicious meal of chicken and zucchini, with some spinach on this side. I poured myself a glass and it smelled wonderful! Rich flavors, a thick creamy head, dark color. But as I took a swig, my stomach turned over! I don't know what it was but this beer is so sweet (almost like root beer), and has such an odd array of flavors, I couldn't drink it! There is almost no flavor of hops. I couldn't even drink half a pint. I kept trying, thinking that I was wrong, but no! I almost lost my dinner it was so sickly sweet tasting. So most of the bottle is sitting in my fridge - maybe Jon will like it but I doubt it.

So as I was sitting there, horribly upset about saving this beer for so long and how awful it was, Jesus spoke to me. This beer, in it's beautiful corked bottle, is like my desire for all of these things that I think will make my life better, happier, more joyful, etc. I tell myself to hold out for them, that someday it will be worth it - but will it? What happens if I pop that cork and it's as awful as the beer? It doesn't matter how pretty the bottle looks on the outside, I have no clue what's actually inside. This is where the title of my blog becomes pertinent - all that matters is whether I can make myself available to Jesus and what He has for me - Jesus, Hineni. I'm learning to trust that Jesus never serves skunky beer.