Hiding, Still Caring

Hiding, Still Caring

 

“Oh that I knew where I might find him!” (Job 23:3).

 

This despairing cry was uttered fifteen centuries before Christ. That it should ever be uttered now, by any person who possesses the Bible and has even the slightest faith in Christ, would seem impossible if we did not know that it is only too often the cry of even Christian hearts. In fact, in the lives of many Christians, it is a great difficulty. God seems to hide himself from their longing gaze, and this hiding seems often to be in anger or in neglect. This is especially the case in our everyday lives; in the ordinary business and bustle of everyday life, we are apt to lose consciousness of God. Then, because we do not feel His presence, we think He cannot be there.

 

Because we cannot see the hand of God in our affairs, we rush to the conclusion that He has lost sight of them and of us. We look at the “seemings” of things and declare that because God is unseen He must necessarily be absent. This is especially the case if we are conscious of having wandered away from Him and forgotten Him. We judge Him by ourselves and think that He must have forgotten and forsaken us. We measure His truth by our falseness and find it hard to believe He can be faithful when we know ourselves to be so unfaithful. How foolish it is to make our feelings the test of God’s actions, as if He comes and goes in response to the continual changes in our emotions!