When God Hides
Verse: Psalms 13
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
— Psalm 13:1
There are benefits to pastoral ministry. Recently a woman wrote about how thrilled her family was to receive their green cards for permanent residency in this country. We had prayed consistently for this family and supported them through their many struggles and setbacks. Now she shared her joy with her church family.
Of course, pastoral ministry also has tough times. Once I stood with a newly married wife as her husband yelled at her, calling her every name possible. He ripped her house keys out of her hands. Later, he replaced the locks on their house and boarded up the windows to prevent her from getting back in.
The ups and downs of pastoral ministry are echoed in Psalm 13. Among the delights of praise, we hear a litany of despair. Where is God when one of us gets a bad report from the doctor? Where is God when a marriage breaks under the stress of unemployment? Where is God when a spouse dies?
One of the hardest challenges I’ve faced is finding God in loss. I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital, praying for the recovery of her daughter. The daughter had been married only a year. While delivering the woman’s baby, the doctor nicked something with his knife. Now the young woman was fighting for her life.
Her mother was inconsolable. When we prayed, she felt no peace. Within hours, her daughter was gone. After that, the mother stopped going to church. The young husband was angry and didn’t know how to care for his baby alone. Where was God?
That question is often asked in suffering or loss. And often the only answer appears to be silence. The promises of Scripture fade in the agony of sorrow. The Holy Spirit seems to withdraw from hearts that grow chilly. Where is God when airplanes crash? Where is God when a spouse is unfaithful? Where is God when a baby dies? Where is God?
Psalm 13 echoes those concerns. In verse 1, the psalmist David asks God, “How long will you hide your face from me?” But this isn’t the end of the psalm. Rather, the psalmist goes on to assure us that our God, who is enthroned on high, stoops low to see and hear and know us—even when we can’t see his face and his words are like a foreign language to us.
“I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation,” said David (Psalm 13:5). Likewise we continue to love and trust God, not for what we get out of it right now, but because it is the only way to make sense of this life. We trust in God, not because we always feel the wonder of his divine presence, but because there is truly no one else to turn to but God. And in time we will live to say, “He has been good to me” (Psalm 13:6).
—Wayne Brouwer
Let’s Talk
• What suffering have we known? How did it affect us? What was our relationship with God like at the time?
• How do we know that God cares for us today? What would we say as a testimony if asked to share our stories?
• What do we need from each other during stressful times? How can we best echo back to one another the confident testimonies of Psalm 13?
This devotion is from the Couples' Devotional Bible by Zondervan. Used with permission.
