In Absentia
You hid Your face, I was dismayed. To You, O Lord, I called, and to the Lord I made supplication: “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your faithfulness?” Psalm 30:7b-9 NASB
Hid – “In a world where God hides His face, human life seems to be of no concern to Him. He neither communicates through prophecy nor responds to human distress by miraculous action. What remains is a highly brocaded surface reality, a hallucinatory focus on materials, modalities, laws, techniques, advisers, texts, time consumed in banal successiveness.”[1]
The end of the prophets was far more disastrous than Christian thinking allows. From the Christian perspective, the age of the prophets gave way to the rise of the Messiah. Jesus supplants John. God’s plan required the end of emissaries of His word so that the final installment of manifestation could occur. From the Christian perspective, the prophets were inevitably replaced by a far greater reality: the coming of the Messiah.
Two thousand years later, we still cry out for God to show His face to us. Two thousand years later we are still occupying a universe in absentia. We have the promise of the King, but he departed long ago. We wait, and while we wait, we languish. Where is the word of the Lord now, when we so desperately need His assurance? Where is His presence when evil roams the earth without restraint? What good are rules, laws, techniques, advisors when the Master of All hides behind galactic clouds of dust? Don’t we need the voice of one crying in the wilderness in order to survive this long ordeal? The organized Church, the religious Jew, the orthodoxy of the faithful—is it enough when so much of being human is at risk of being consumed by the soul-eating virus of arrogant power? Is the Way of the Righteous to be found in a statement of beliefs, a confession of faith, a creed? Don’t we need the word alive, delivered in the mouth of God’s spokesperson, freed from the banality of our religious concerns?
Why does it seem that God is in absentia? Could it be that Man has banished Him from the creation, content to live in a random universe because accident obliterates morality? If the prophets returned, would we have to confront our gross idolatry of theological arrogance? Would we have to mourn over our divisiveness, our insistence that we are right and “they” are wrong? Would we have to repent for the lack of compassion for our Creator’s world as we entertain ourselves to death? Perhaps God is in absentia because we are no longer attending to His call. Perhaps we have blotted out His voice with the din of our Babylonian temples to human superiority. Maybe God just can’t be seen through the fog of our pretentions to greatness.
Topical Index: hide, absence, Psalm 30:7-9
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, p. 131.
Among his many books Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote both “God in Search of Man” and “Man in Search of God”. Which one has the greater difficulty? Supposedly we already know the One (one) who was successful. Maybe that is why the whole pagan God-man concept is so popular and so deceptively easy to swallow, digest and…well, you know the next step. Forget the Prophets, Preachers and Polemics; if we don’t know who the Jewish Messiah was supposed to be how can we ever know who He really is?
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.”
Hosea 4:6
Hummm this is a tough place to be. I hear the deep sigh from that dark hollow space within. Yet perhaps it is actually the question that is the issue not the need for the answer. Perhaps the question creates the need for the answer? “Be still and know that I am God” is the call to eat of the tree of life, it is in my mind the tempting fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that leads to so many questions….
It is with my mind I struggle most with trusting; trusting that I can still here Yehovah speak. Isiah promises “You will hear a voice behind you saying this is the way walk in it whenever you turn to the left or right.” It was you Skip that brought such light on just what “behind you” actually means with your analogy of the row boat – God speaks to us from our futures not our past or perhaps even the present. He is the time. Yet I will not doubt-He is still speaking if we believe we can hear, if we are quite and listen; we will eventually!
The reference say’s it all “Reflections on the Biblical unconscious” I think we know, that we know in the depths of our unconscious, But from our mind we begin to question what we know in our hearts. This is the realm of the spirit and it is a mystery. And I think why Paul suggest we “take captive every thought and subject it to Christ”.
Paul Simon sings “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls”. Are they really silent? Or is it we who have stopped listening or worse yet believing we can here?
I am reminded also of some profound words of Art Katz “I tell you that intellect, human endowment, and human cleverness have not a thing to do with the revelation of God’s mysteries. “but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” God does not will that we abandon the intellect, but only that we sweep it off our alters and use it in the service of our creator”
In conclusion, I could not find the quote of G.K Chesterton yet He suggests we have questioned everything that can be questioned it’s time to believe in the answers. The question might be Is it time to simply trust in the answers provided already? However as Skip suggest in the book “Crossings” it is in the struggle to come to know that Jacob becomes Israel, and so the dance goes on.
May you my brother Skip and friends about this table find and trust that still small voice that yet speaks “this is the way walk in it”…
Mark you hit the nail on the head. Be still. It is my observation with all the uncertainty I have faced and face and see and hear of others facing in their respective lives that we are all to busy searching, trying to understand, dwelling on our past traumas etc that we have no understanding it seems of what it means to BE STILL in our spirit and KNOW He is Elohim. If I had not taken this on board this last year I would have been dead…physically and spiritually. It was a ‘Job’ reaction …..I put my hand over my mouth…..now I SEE you (who you really are) and it’s ok whatever you choose to do with me to get me to a place of stillness! May we as u have said Mark be STILL and listen and hopefully by listening in stillness of spirit -HEAR!
I remember a fellow teacher and I discussing whether our students really listen and then hear and do what we have suggested. He said well I think they listen but not sure they hear. He continued ‘ my five year old son heard me calling him and asking him to do something at least three times when he finally called out and said ‘dad I am listening but I’m not hearing you’! (A five year old!). Perhaps we are saying something like that to Yah…..and if so perhaps that’s why we don’t enter into shalom, knowing HE is in charge…no matter what the circumstances and that thru our circumstances he is speaking but we don’t hear him because we are so focused on them and not Him.
I am thankful right now, this minute, that I know HE is. Even when uncertainty/health/economic and unresolved issues surround me daily.
Be encouraged everyone He will never leave us or forsake us…. it is in this state of being STILL in our spirit, that we help others -our assurance is not in our circumstances, our abilities etc etc. but in knowing who HE is and that he is talking!
Christine
What a testimony, Christine!
Malachi tells us that the end time will be characterized by YHVH “pouring out His spirit on ALL FLESH”, and it seems the text implies that we will experience mass prophesying (when it talks about the young ones also prophesying, I wonder if that is referring to those young in the faith?). I wonder if that will be when the Body gets its act together and finally learns to sing – not each their ‘own’ little tune, but HIS tune through us – in harmony. Let’s practice today!`
Oh, to be able to do that, we would have to “be still”, like Christine says; to quit singing our own tune first.
, these stories are great. It’s man lifting up man, in a struggle to see who’s faith is stronger, I guess it is not realized , in the struggle it’s the faith in God’s promised Messiah that kind of faith where God spoke, things came into reality. But only God’s Spirit doing the work.
The verses of Galatians come to mind… I am not doing the work, it is Christ in me he does the work. There is no other Foundation that will hold up against the storms.
Sorry my brain is still recovering from moving to yet another abode………the 5 year old said ’ I can hear you but I’m not listening! ‘ ……. Makes it really profound….. hearing but not listening ( or obeying!)
C
I figured it had to be that way round! ?
Right on, Mark!
We all stand at life’s great intersection.
The kingdom of this world is noisy and messy and
replete with distractions galore.
Not so His kingdom.
“then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . .”
Yes, listen to that still small voice and “seek first His kingdom
and His righteousness . . .”
It’s a choice we make every single day!
Yes. It was Chesterton. My hobby is collecting quotes, but I need a better system to find them when I need them and to note their origin. “We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers”
He also said: ” The point of an open mind, like a mouth is to close it again on something solid”!
There was a whale found with 15 pounds of plastic in his dead body. I have been mourning over our treatment of creation. I try to repent for “we,” but “we” are so far from YHVH that I get overwhelmed and focus on repentance in my own life. Will YHVH hear the prayers of a small remnant? He heard Yeshua as well as His disciples. Our Messiah mourned over the sin He encountered. The more time I take to literally be still and ask to hear from heaven, the more I sense my own sin and the sin of our culture and our world. Sometimes I wonder if it might please the Father to know that I at least try to walk in His ways and see the world through His Word. I long to please Him in such a rebellious world. I wish I was more like a Biblical hall of famer when I say, “Here am I. Send me.” I do believe that He turns His face towards me and is certainly gracious more than I deserve. His Word is seen and heard in the world when we allow His living water to flow through us so we can be living wells for others. Skip, I pray He turns His face towards you because you are a deep well for many.
I share this for my friend Skip who is: Deep abiding waters…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Deep abiding waters still with wisdom’s age
Silent.
Deep abiding waters, of my heart of my soul
Deep abiding waters still before me lay
Silent.
I stared into your waters and I cried, I cried.
I stared into your waters and I cried and drank.
I know, my sorrow and my pain carved out the cistern
Until you came.
You filled me with yourself so I became,
Deep abiding waters that others might drink.
Deep abiding waters at last I know you by name
Yeshua!
.
William Mark Parry ©1989
worksofwords.live
Beautiful
Skip, as I read your article my heart was saying – thanks Skip for the way you use your scholarship, to make us think and help us face/understand our own life and life’s realities! Thanks also for the skillful and penetrating way you string along thoughts to challenge and/or strengthen our own thoughts on the matters you bring to our attention.
Today, I am hearing Art Katz (obm), in the spirit of your writing: “Don’t we need the word alive, delivered in the mouth of God’s spokesperson, freed from the banality of our religious concerns?” But I was also pleasantly surprised when that ‘refrain’ was picked up by Mark’s reference to Katz and then his comment was followed by my good friend Christine who introduced me to Katz many years ago! So, today feels like I’m sitting ‘At God’s Table’ in a Katz-refreshing kind of way! I just wanted to let you know. ?
This brings tears to my eye’s.I so loved and valued Art. I miss him dearly. He was a spiritual father to this orphan..
Emet. (Truth).
Apparently, Aviva Zornberg is unaware of the miracles and answered prayers that occur regularly in the name of Messiah Yeshua…in spite of man’s attempt to banish Him from the creation. The King still hears (and listens) to the cries of the faithful remnant.
I’m not sure if I am interpreting this right, but I do not believe that Yah is absent; we are the ones away from his kingdom living in Babylon. Yah has never moved away, we are awakening to the shofar and practicing Shema in a world that does not want to hear Him. Jeremiah reminds us that we are slaves, with orders to build houses, work the land and have children’s so we can show the presence of a powerful God in a world that does not know him. Without our trials how are we going to be able to witness and be a living testimony of his majesty? I know to whom I belong to, and that is sufficient to me.
Yes, maybe God can’t be seen through the fog of our pretensions to greatness…ie elevating man & his achievments. I like what Julian of Norwich (I have meditated much in her revelations and believe she had a genuine experience of the love of Jesus Christ) said “Our blindness prevents us from seeing the blessed face of our Lord clearly…that is our spiritual eye is so blind and borne down by the weight of our mortal flesh and the darkness of sin and because of this murkiness we can scarce believe & trust His great love for us.” She goes on to say that there are 2 sins that trouble us and tempt us most, impatience or sloth and dispair or fearful doubting. We have Jesus as our example how to overcome these two inclinations in us. She says the reason we are greatly troubled by them is our ignorance of love. We can believe that God is all mighty and he shall do everything and that he is all wisdom and can do everything but that he is all love and will do everything, there we hold back (Heb.10:38).
This morning the thot came to me that I must see Christ incarnate in flesh and His heaven on earh in the Here & Now, otherwise, I may only know Him by his “in absentia”. Jacques Ellul said of Rev. 12 that God chose the way of non-power, of incognito, of humility, the renunciation of his power in order to be nothing more than love. But now comes the testing…how will we respond?…love by hate? non power by the unleashing of man’s power? to grace by the triumph of money? to the gift by rape?, to the covenant by war – then man actually reveals who he is and there his judgement resides.
Are we going or not going to that third feast?
I think it interesting, David’s plea seems to me different than Skip’s writing that follows. David did hear from YHVH, though the means by which he had this contact is not always clear. He acknowledges though at this point he feels the absence of that presence. It seems to me, there are relatively few who really heard or felt the presence of YHVH (whole story of Job, and realistcally the whole scriptures…only a few of all mankind). So is it surprising that we as a searching people are aware of this void? I hear people say, “God told me ….., or lead me to…..” I believe them, they are sincere. But for Some reason, not all of us. I have pondered, does He lead, direct me, but I just don’t perceive it as Him? What is the difference? Is there some kind of spiritual hinderance blocking some of us? I dont think it means that we are not doing His Will, but that we feel rather like floating in a very murky, polluted river, blind and bumbling along the best we can. Our feelers on high alert, waiting, hoping for that Word for us to be assured that we are heading in the correct direction, in some ways rather like Job and even David? Thank you, Skip for your insightful ponderings of scripture, and your view on how it may relate on our journeys.