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