July 22, 1979

There is a story of a unit of soldiers during WWII who were cut off from the other troops and supplies. As they prepared to go into battle, one of the privates discovered that he no longer even had a gun. He reported this to the sergeant. The resourceful sergeant found a broomstick in the rubble. “Here, private, use this. Whenever you see the enemy coming, aim it, and go ‘bang-bang’.” Scratching his head, the private answered: “Sarge, I’m not so sure this will work, because I don’t even have a bayonet for hand to hand combat.” The sergeant became a bit impatient: “Private, do I have to tell you everything? Here, take this stick and tie it to the side of your rifle. When you get into hand to hand combat, thrust it and say ‘stab-stab.’” In battle the broomstick gun worked pretty well at first. As the private sighted an enemy soldier, he would take aim, go bang-bang, and sure enough the soldier would fall. Finally he sighted a soldier, aimed, bang-bang, but the enemy kept coming. He did this several times without result. As the enemy got closer he switched to stab-stab, and still got no reaction. In fact, the enemy soldier walked right over him, stomping and hurting him. As the soldier laid there hurting, he heard this as the enemy proceeded on his way: “Tank-tankity-tank-tank.”

If you have not discovered it yet, then you soon will learn that humans get tanked from time to time in our life. Our broomstick defenses are just no match for the tanks of serious illness or when we have to witness the pain and suffering of someone we love. Relational problems can roll over us when things just don’t seem to be working between us and our spouse, or bombed by promotions missed, recognition that doesn’t comes and an economy we can’t control. The aging process has a way of wearing our defense from within. I heard someone say that you know your’e getting old when one day you look into the mirror and see that everything but your hairline is a quarter of an inch lower. Sometimes that which tanks is not a clearly discernible enemy. All we know is that a paralyzing wave of boredom and depression just creeps into every nook and cranny of us and we begin to wonder if anything is worth the effort. Tanks come in many sizes and shapes. Perhaps yours is one I haven’t mentioned. They certainly are not always personal. Every newscast we see and every newspaper we read makes us aware of the tanks of hunger and energy shortage which are already taking their toll on the earth.

What I am getting what I'm getting at is this. Sooner or later the tanks and hurts of life causes to play what I am calling "divine hide and go seek." Divine hide and go seek is the search for God and seeming God forsaken situations. It happens each time we wonder "where is God in this crazy predicament?" Variations of this game’s questions are: “Is there a God at all?" Or was Freud and people like him right when they said God is just a product of human imagination because we cannot take the truth that we live in a cold and careless space which we presumptuously call a universe? “If there is a God, can he help?" “If he can and has power, then does he want to help?” People begin to play divine hide and go seek when God seems not present but absent. Lest we feel like the Lone Ranger, divine hide and go seek, the scary experience of God seeming absence is not new. Isaiah knew it when he cried out: “Why don't you tear the sky open and come down… You have hidden yourself from us and abandon us."

Isaiah experienced the absence of God almost 550 years before the birth of Jesus. In the year 586 BC the superpower of the Babylonians defeated Judah and carried off many Israelites to Babylon and virtual slavery. This was a bitter pill, no doubt, for people who believed themselves to be God chosen people. Understandably, many wondered if there was a God, and if there was, where in the world was he while they were humiliated and homesick. After 50 years in Babylon, they were allowed to go home when Cyrus the Persian defeated the Babylonians. Isaiah and his people rallied. They sensed God working behind the scenes of history through Cyrus to liberate them. “At long last," they must have felt "our God has returned."

Yet when they returned home to Judah and her capital city of Jerusalem, they painfully discovered that their problems were not over. Their beloved Jerusalem had been leveled. The holy temple was in shambles. For 50 years, they had longed for and dreamed of home, but when they got there, they hardly knew where to begin. The courts, schools, businesses, the temple, and homes all had to be organized again from the ground up. They needed God's help, and judging from what Isaiah says here, they just weren't sure where God was in all these problems. They could look back into their history and see that God been with their ancestors and them there: the deliverance of Moses and the children of Israel from Egypt, their recent return from Babylonian captivity. God, they believed, had been there. But on the pinpoint of the present where they – like you and I – lived well, they just weren't sure whether God was there. Tanked by their ruined homeland, they felt abandoned and deserted by God. They wanted God to make a move in their lives and they wondered if he ever would again. It was divine hide and go seek for them all right. "There was a time,” "Isaiah says, "when you did terrifying things we did not expect. Why don't you open the sky and come down?”

In the New Testament we also find divine hide and go seek. Mark’s 13th chapter has Jesus' disciples questioning him about when God will do the momentous things in the world Jesus talked about. When will he, they wanted to know, straighten out their lives? By the time the actual gospel of Mark was put together, it was some 30 years after the earthly ministry of Jesus. The early, struggling church was wondering if God would finish what Jesus started on earth. For a while they expected is return any day. But the days stretched in months and months and years so they like people before and like us after them begin to wonder where God was…divine hide and go seek. So it meant very much to them when we Mark recalled Jesus’ words: "Nobody knows when God will do what he will do. All we can say all we can do is stay awake and be ready!”

In the remainder of this, I would like to share with you some of my ideas about this crucial life matter of divine hide and go seek, how God maybe found in seeming godforsaken situations. I don't think we should give up on God because I don't think he ever really gives up on us. Sometimes we simply need to look for the ways God chooses to act instead of the way we think he should act. Here are some of my hunches.

1. First, could it be that God sometimes makes himself conspicuous by his absence in our lives? I'll tell you how I got to this notion. Every so often Dianne and I decide that we need to get off to ourselves for a few days. We line up the grandmothers and anxiously await the big getaway. We can hardly wait to be free from spilled milk, interrupted conversations, blaring TVs, and the daily dozen of questions we don't know the answer to or don't want to answer yet. The first 24 hours away from kids are great – free at last! But then on the second or third day something happens. We start saying things like: "I wonder what they are doing or did I tell you the thing Alice or Bailey said the other day?” Before we know it, we want to see them so badly we can't stand it. Their absence has a way of making us aware of their importance to us, how deeply they are present in us even when they are physically absent, how we take them for granted. In short, nothing quite makes us appreciate our children like their temporary absence.

It seems to me that the experience of God's absence made Isaiah and his people more aware of their need for him than a cocky taking his presence for granted ever could. Their scary situation of feeling abandoned by God caused them to recall the wonderful things God had done in the past. Isaiah admits that they had not treated God or one another in the way they have been taught. You see, it may have been that God had not deserted them at all, but that he was doing one of those terrifying things they did not expect which Isaiah talked about. They may have felt like God was gone, but it sure looks to me like God had their attention more than ever.

And what was true for them may be true for you and me. Perhaps, our doubts, and restlessness about the reality of God may prod us closer to him not farther away. Saint Augustine said centuries ago: "God, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in thee.” I have a hunch that our restlessness about whether God is real or not is a sign not of God's absence but a sign of his presence afoot in and among us. Could it be one of those terrifying, unexpected things God does is to make himself conspicuous at times in our lives by his absence?

2. Isaiah almost made a mistake that we tend to make it times. He equated the presence of big problems in his life with the absence of God. There is a preferred form of Christianity around today promoted often by TV religion that gives the impression of being Christian means that you always be a success, your children won't get cavities, and you'll be able to jump over problems like superman of buildings. Yet if we trust the general sweep of the Bible, and we will discover that this is an erroneous assumption, the biblical characters who we look to as examples of people who knew God's presence and power and special ways were by no means immune to problems and pain. In fact, being God's person was often the point at which they felt the pain. When Jeremiah delivered unpopular messages to the people from God, they rewarded him by throwing him in a pit. David suffered both the rebellion and death of his children. Paul was chased out of towns, beaten, and imprisoned on more than one occasion. And Jesus, who knew God as Father in a way we all hunger for, well, let's not forget why there is a cross on our altar. In short, my second point for divine hide and go seek is this: the pain we experience in our living may very well be the point at which we will come closest to God's presence in our lives. The pain points may be the contact points with God that get us closer to who we need to be for God, for others, and last, but not least who we need to be for ourselves.

A few months ago I sweated out some tough days with a family in our church in Birmingham. All the preliminary tests suggested a serious possibly grave, condition in the neck of the young mother which required immediate surgery. The night before the surgery and before we knew exactly what the surgeon would find, we talked a long time in her hospital room. She said this to me: "I have never been so afraid before and I've never prayed. This ordeal has taught me a lot. It has made me do serious thinking about what I'm doing with my life. I've decided that I wasted too much time nitpicking about things that don't amount to a hill of beans. I love my husband and children and they love me. When if ever we buy this or pay off that really doesn't matter.” By no means do I suggest that God makes us sick or hurt to teach us a lesson. God is always at work with us struggling for health. But it seems that most of us have to hurt before we are willing to pay attention to God and the growing and changing we need to do.

Most of us don’t like the boats of our lives rocked. I can identify with the Peanuts character Linus’ comment when he said: "All that stands between me and nervous breakdown is 36 inches of security blanket." But when things are going our way, we don't pay much attention to what we are doing with our lives and what we are doing to people around us. Pain has a way of getting our attention. The times when the security blankets of health, finances, and taken- for-granted relationships are threatened may be the very occasions for us to move closer to God and make changes in our relationships and priorities. When the boom is lowered on us with the job disappointment, family conflict, or just the general toll of the years, we have to face it that we are not smart enough, good enough, strong enough, or pretty enough to go it alone. At this point we may discover ourselves reaching out to God and others God uses to get his love to us more than ever. And when people are taking hard looks at their lives, making changes and growing, I believe God is present not absent. You see, the Holy Spirit may be God with us at times, not so much to soothe and calm down, but God with us to disturb us and prod us into making changes. On a world scale, as scary as energy and good shortages are, maybe only the threat of collapse of the world as we know it will motivate us to change our world from a dog-eat-dog place into a brother-and-sister-feed-each-other place.

A few days ago I read a statement I think I agree with: "People don't always grow because of pain. But they never grow without it." So if you are engaged not in the game, but the life and death struggle of divine hide and go seek today, then I ask you to pay attention to your pain. The pain point may be the place where you will find God most present not absent. You see, pain is not the problem; it simply tells us we have a problem. Whether it be with your job, your health, or your spouse or family, the pain points may be the place where God is most active seeking to get your attention, to change you, and make you grow. Where are you hurting? That could be the place to look for God.

3. Thirdly, if Isaiah and Jesus teach us anything about divine hide and go seek – finding God in seeming God forsake situations – then they teach us this: God’s presence doesn’t rescue us from our problems; his presence gives us strength to get in deeper. The presence of God is not a tranquilizer but a shot of strength for living on earth as his children.

When Isaiah and his people returned to ruined Jerusalem, they discovered that being God’s people did not give them a free bus ride out of the dilemmas of living as a community. Being God’s people involved feeding, housing, and educating one another. Husbands and wives still had to work on their marriage relationships. Christian husbands and wives, you see, are not characterized by an absence of problems, but by a presence of willingness to work on them. Parents still had to struggle with the upbringing of their children. In the early church, there was to be sure a fond hope for Jesus’ return and a desire for God to do dramatic things yet they're waiting was not passive but active. They were busy trying to change the world from a dog-eat-dog place into a brother-and-sister-feed-one another place. In Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, we see people in the middle of life wrestling with possibilities and problems struggling to overcome the nauseating fear of death with trust in God. My conclusion is that God is with us not to enable us to escape life's pitfalls hurdles or curves. He is present with us to give strength for us to be growing, fully alive human beings.

Joanna Greenberg spent some time in a mental hospital as a patient when a teenager. Under the pen name of Hannah Green. She gives a fictionalized account of her struggle for sanity. Her book is entitled I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The main character in the book is teenaged Deborah who seeks refuge from the scary real world in the unreal world of schizophrenia. Her doctor struggles to get her to return to the real world. But Deborah wants the doctor to promise her that she will not have any problems if she does as the doctor wants. This is the doctor’s reply: "Look here, I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice…and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is so that you can be free to fight for all these things. The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose garden world of perfection is a lie…and a bore too!"

In short, God does not fight our battles for us, and he doesn't live our lives for us. He gives us some years, some strength, and some love so that we can search out a life worth living for ourselves and each other. He gives us people around us we can help and who can help us get all the meaning we can from our living and dying.

Tips for divine hide and go seek: One sometimes God is conspicuous by his absence in our lives. Two, God is strange way of showing up in the middle of our problems. Three, God has a tendency to get us deeper in life’s problems, giving us strength, and not letting us side step the risks. 2500 years ago, Isaiah said God does terrifying things and he does them when we least expect it. He still does.