The Presence and Absence of God

Just the other day I read a statement that caught my eye, probably because it was so germane to what I am doing these days as a part-time minister of visitation. Clearly my calling attention to the presence of God in whatever circumstance I find people is key to their comfort. But what can I offer when, to them, God seems absent?

"God's absence," writes Christain Wiman in the February 24 issue of The Christian Century, "is always a call to his presence." Referencing Simone Weil, she says, "her genius is to give form to the feeling of lack that leads a believer to cry out that this world, however much it is loved, is not enough." In other words, the very sense of God's absence so often felt in times of illness and/or tragedy is a recognition of our need for his presence. Inevitably there come times in all our lives when hungers arise in us for time beyond our time, eternal things that remain when the ground underneath our earthly life is shaking beneath and around us.

From somewhere else, in a place I cannot remember, came a piece of advice that might well prove useful in such situations. "Don't seek comfort first; seek the Comforter." If, in fact, comfort is all we seek, we may well miss the Comforter. But in seeking him first, his face and his presence, the comfort we most need will surely be granted.

Winan applies the advice in a broader context, calling on all of us to get out of our heads, as if faith were simply understanding things, and out into life to engage the needs of others. "Do not pray to be at peace in your belief," she writes. "Pray that your anxieties be given peaceful outlets, that you may be the means to a peace which you yourself do not feel."

Yes! That's exactly how I am experiencing God's presence in my own life these days. By seeking to be a means of peace in the lives of others, God is giving me a peace I would not otherwise have, deep peace in the heart of my being.