“To come to the pleasure you have not you must go by a way in which you enjoy not.” St. John of the Cross
Foster’s opening section of this chapter argues that “There is no more plaintive or heartfelt prayer than the cry of Jesus: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27:46b, KJV), and that, although Jesus’ experience was unique in the sense of Him as the Blameless One taking on the sin of the world, “we might as well get used to the idea that, sooner or later, we, too, will know what it means to feel forsaken by God.”
Writers in antiquity used the term Deus Absconditus—“the God who is hidden”—to describe this feeling or sense of God being absent…and Foster uses the apt term “Sahara of the Heart” to describe the feeling of inner spiritual desolation or abandonment that may come into our lives at times, in keeping with the biblical metaphor of desert or wilderness for these times.
A Major Highway
Foster encourages us that these times of spiritual dryness are “not a rabbit trail but a major highway,” listing out many examples from the Bible and Church history of saints going through such times. We remarked that this also points out that these seasons of our life have a goal, are part of the whole “plan” and journey of our life, not some dead-end or “falling off the path.” Indeed, Foster ends this section by saying that if we are faced with God’s “hiddenness,” we should not automatically take it that “God is displeased with you, or that you are insensitive to the work of God’s Spirit, or that you have committed some horrendous offense against heaven, or that there is something wrong with you, or anything. Darkness is a definite experience of prayer. It is to be expected, even embraced.”
We spent some time talking about some of the examples that Foster mentions, in particular Elijah and his time in the desert alone, feeling like he just wanted to die. We discussed the fact that deep grief, trauma, and physical exhaustion can overwhelm our ability to reason and problem-solve effectively, or to effectively manage our emotions. Small wonder, then, that these visceral human experiences can be accompanied by the sense of God’s absence—that in times of being emotionally overwhelmed and physically exhausted, we may feel cut off from God’s felt presence. The story of Elijah’s suicidal thinking in I Kings 19:4-7 demonstrates God’s compassionate “knowing” of how we are put together (Psalm 103:13-14): he did not immediately answer Elijah in his overwhelmed state, but let him fall asleep, then woke him to feed him(!), had him sleep some more, and woke him to feed him again before He spoke anything of substance to Elijah. Sometimes, if we are feeling despair and the sense of abandonment from God, we need to be sure to take care of our basic, bodily needs, so we can come to a place where we are able to listen and hear.
In keeping with Foster’s argument that desert times in our spiritual lives need not have anything to do with wrongdoing on our part, we also discussed the example of Mother Teresa. She had prayed to know more of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, to enter into the “fellowship of sharing in the suffering of Christ” (Philippians 3:10). And she did enter into an aspect of Jesus’ intense suffering on the cross: the sense of being cut off from God’s presence. Mother Teresa suffered this “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross) for all the decades of her mature adult life. Those who worked and lived with her said that the sweet aroma of Christ surrounded her and flowed from her, yet she herself was completely cut off from any of this comforting, beautiful sense of God’s presence…Elijah, Jeremiah, Moses, Mother Teresa, Jesus—we are in good company, indeed, when we experience silence from the heavens!
We also read an excerpt from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest (Oct. 11) on this topic of being in a time of spiritual silence: his commentary on the passage recounting the story of Lazarus’ sickness and death, and then resurrection. “When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days in the same place where he was." (John 11:6) Has God trusted you with a silence - a silence that is big with meaning? God's silences are His answers. Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany [of Lazarus and his sisters, as he was dying]! Is there anything analogous to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking for a visible answer?
God will give you the blessings you ask if you will not go any further without them; but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into a marvellous understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because He saw that you could stand a bigger revelation [think of Jesus’ revelation of Himself to Martha as the Resurrection and the Life!]. If God has given you a silence, praise Him, He is bringing you into the great run of His purposes. The manifestation of the answer in time is a matter of God's sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you said – ‘I asked God to give me bread, and He gave me a stone.’ He did not, and to-day you find He gave you the bread of life.”
“GOD, WHERE ARE YOU!? What have I done to make you hide from me? Are you playing cat and mouse with me, or are your purposes larger than my perceptions? I feel alone, lost, forsaken.
You are the God who majors in revealing yourself. You showed yourself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Moses wanted to know what you looked like, you obliged him. Why them and not me?
I am tired of praying. I am tired of asking. I am tired of waiting. But I will keep on praying and asking and waiting because I have nowhere else to go.
Jesus, you, too, knew the loneliness of the desert and the isolation of the cross. And it is through your forsaken prayer that I speak these words. –Amen”
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