The Absence Of God

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” – Exodus 2:23

“The story in which God does his saving work arises among a people whose primary experience of God is his absence.”- Eugene Peterson

When I go through piano pieces with the kids, I often say, “you have to play the rests.” The spaces of silence are as important as the notes. The musical score of the book of Exodus begins with one startling, long rest. Do you hear it? God’s people have been in slavery for 430 years. That’s a long time. What happened to the covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Did His providence through Joseph count for anything?  

The experience of God as absent is a normal part of the salvation story, of our spiritual lives. We see this from the lips of the Psalmist and Jesus alike: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22, Matthew 27). We need to recognize this, and see the necessity of it. In our consumeristic society, it teaches us that God is not a God who answers to our beck and call. He does not need to account for himself to us. It keeps us alert and attentive to a mysterious Other. It allows us to identify with Christ. It draws us to reach for salvation and spiritual transformation beyond our comfort zones.

It’s good to look for these biblical blanks, to not rush to fill them in, to realize they are a normal part of the story that God tells. Good companions in these spaces are songs like Andrew Peterson’s “The Silence Of God,” or poems like this one from R. S. Thomas:

            Why no! I never thought other than

            That God is that great absence

            In our lives, the empty silence

            Within, the place where we go

            Seeking, not in hope to

            Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices

            In our knowledge, the darkness

            Between stars. His are the echoes

            We follow, the footprints he has just

            Left. We put our hands in

            His side hoping to find

            It warm. We look at people

            And places as though he had looked

            At them, too: but miss the reflection.