Rupert’s Blog

I will look at some Scriptures that I think describe this experience of “desert” in another post, but here I want to introduce other phrases that describe this “desert” time.

Some people use the phrase absence when describing this season of God not seeming to be present - and it can seem that God is absent. However, it is only our perception that God is absent, as we know that God can’t really be absent and, in any meaningful sense, still be God! God, by definition, is present. All the time. Everywhere. What I am describing in this series is times when it seems to us that God is absent.

Actually God is with us, but in a different way from the way we usually discern Him. It is as though He moves from staring into our face to standing behind us. If we are very quiet and still we can possibly feel the faintest movement of air as He “breathes” on the back of our neck. God is with us, but we have very little sense of his presence. So I have coined the phrase the “withness of God“. So often we when we talk about the presence of God we are talking about something tangible, experiential. People say how wonderful it is be in the presence of God (and it is!). But for some people, when in a “desert” season, the presence of God is not a reality. But the withness of God is always a reality, regardless of what we feel or experience. Sometimes, the difficulty is discerning how God is with us.

Due to God’s withness, I prefer not to use the term absence. Therefore, others use the term hiddeness to describe times when God seems absent. God is not absent, but is also not always clearly seen. Sometimes, he is hidden from our spiritual sight, our ability to discern Him. What we are facing here is the difficulty of sensing and knowing a God who can’t be seen by our normal eyes. He is Spirit. We are confined by our physical bodies. So as Paul says in Corinthians, “we see in part”. Dimly. Unclear. There are times when God seems to come into focus, and we have a sense of clarity. Other times He seems invisible, unclear, out of focus. These are the seasons of hiddeness.

I prefer the term hiddeness to absence, although I am still not totally happy with the phrase. It can seem that God is playing some cosmic game of hide and seek, and while there maybe some truth in that some of the time, there are many times when this doesn’t seem the case. We will look in future posts, at the reasons why we might end up in a season of “desert” but it isn’t always because God is playing a game with us.

Hence I have used the term “desert” to describe these seasons. The image is strong and alive. Desert is a very strong metaphor (and reality!) in Scripture. I love the visual picture of walking across the desert, of a journey with companions, moving from one terrain (perhaps a fruitful place?) to another. The journey is part of the process, not just the destination. In this picture we can embrace the desert experience as part of God’s leading for us. It doesn’t have to be bad or negative. It isn’t always easy. But it is part of walking with God throughout our whole live, and one that I think we would do well not to run away from.

The more a human being advances in the Christian faith, the more they live in the presence of God as an absence, the more they accept to die to the idea of becoming aware of God, of fathoming Him. For they have learned, while advancing, that God is unfathomable. And from then on the presence of God assumes value in their eyes only against the backdrop of absence. The mystic, in his long and complicated pilgrimage experiences alternately the presence and absence of God. But, by degrees, the absence of God is felt more and more and the mystic understands that the absence is now the norm. Thus the mystic is someone who has had a long-term confrontation with God, like Jacob in the struggle that he waged all through the night, someone who does not cease to confront God. God always precedes us, we see Him only from behind, He walks ahead. He is ahead of us. What the mystic experiences - and every Christian is a mystic because it is not the great illuminations that are the mark of the mystic but the night, an everyday night - is a kind of distancing from God in proportion to advances in the deepening of their faith.
Jean Francois Six

Tags: Christian Life, Desert, Wilderness, Hiddeness of God, Absence of God

See previous posts:

• Living in the Desert 2
• Living in the Desert 1

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