The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his086/hidden.lzh/HIDDEN.TXT

Text File | 1991-06-30 | 8KB | 136 lines

DEV:IS GOD HIDDEN?

   One of the deep and trustworthy insights on biblical religion, in
the Old Testament and the New, is linked up with the silence, the
hiddenness of God. "Oh that I knew where I might find Him" (23:3), Job
cried out in his torment. "Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: On the left hand, where He
doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right
hand, that I cannot see Him." (Job 23:8, 9) "Verily," said Isaiah,
"thou are a God that hideth thyself." (45:15) "Why standeth thou afar
off" (Psalm 10:1)

   In the New Testament, Philip voices the same wistful question of
Jesus. "Show us the father, " he said, "and we shall be satisfied."
(John 14:8)

   These and many other passages in the scriptures speak of moments in
Human experience when God seems distant, absent or even non-existent.
The records are full of it, and somehow we have got to deal with that,
because it is an experience that is our own. In fact today it is what
constitutes one of the major arguments of unbelief - the absence, the
unknown whereabouts of God. It has become a sophisticated subject for
far out theology and it has provided the theme for any number of
secular plays, principal among them Samuel Beckett's ambiguous fantasy
'Waiting for Godot', an odd story about 2 nondescript hobos waiting
around for someone who never shows up. A vague mysterious person has
promised to meet them there and never comes, or if he came in disguise
they did not recognize him. Even the writer accused of some of the
dirtiest books on the newstands, Henry Miller, in an interview for a
religious magazine, said that we are now passing through a period when
God seems more and more absent and man is doomed to come face to face
with the fate he has created for himself.

   The absent God - the God who doesn't appear, or who comes in ways we
do not recognize! Why should we be surprised at all by this talk of
absence? We could have learned it from the Bible. Centuries ago Isaiah
said, "Verily, thou art a God that hideth thyself." Let's head into
that. Let's remember, first, that this is the God we perceive in
nature, the God who never appears. Who has ever seen Him? We may wish
for some assurance here, but the Almighty doesn't give it. He doesn't
advertise Himself or put a sign on every rose bush reading THIS COMES
THROUGH THE COURTESY OF THE ALMIGHTY. He doesn't put His label on every
summer shower like the advertisers of soap and detergent, WHITER THAN
WHITE. He is always the invisible behind the visible, the unseen mover
behind the motion.

   We are confronted in nature with a certain unknown element, with all
things moving, without an apparent Mover. The world seems to operate
under it's own steam. The seasons come and go without our help; the
earth turns around every day; the heat of the sun lifts water from the
sea, and when the clouds are chilled, the rains fall; the grass grows
green to manufacture food to keep all living things alive. It is all so
simple, self- regulating and automatic that much of our modern thinking
about nature, because of it's consistent regularity, has seemed to move
in the direction of eliminating the very idea of the necessity of God.
Who needs Him? The thing runs itself. This causes that, and that's it.
The mover never shows up.

   We are confronted too, with the element of purpose. Every living
organism and every individual cell has a bit of intelligence in it,
something akin to our minds, and seems to know within itself what it is
supposed to do or be. Something pushes a palm seed to become a palm
tree. It never makes a mistake and becomes a pumpkin. From the moment a
seed touches the soil it seems to know within itself what its needs are
and how to meet them. It lifts a hundred tons of sap each year into its
branches to make its blossoms, and its cluster of seeds keeps palm
trees coming on. By its own built in intelligence it moves to it's own
creative end. Where is the mind behind the mind, the power that does
the pushing? We never see it, the pusher never shows up. There's an
amazing chemistry in everything, but we never see the chemist. There is
a mathematical movement in the order of the stars so accurate we set
our clocks by it, but the engineer never comes out to take a bow.
There's beauty in the order.

   The artistry is here. Where is the Artist? The scientist today sees
the universe as a single living process, a web of life in which all
things are linked together by a maze of laws so intricate and
interwoven, so far-reaching and complex, that no human mind can hold it
in totality. It's not only bigger than we imagine, it is bigger than we
CAN imagine; and yet the organizer, the architect of the great design,
never makes a speech to tell us how it is done. Even its laws are so
deftly hidden it takes almost a genius to discover them. He is hidden
even in His presence.

   A man from Florida brought a Lawsuit against God and company, when
an Insurance firm denied his claim for damages in an accident on the
grounds that it was an "act of God." So, he brought suit against God
and company and named as co-defendants the churches of the city who
claimed to be God's representative. The court dismissed the case as
disrespectful. The defendant didn't show up, but that's intriguing. If
you had a case against the Almighty, whom would you sue? Where would
you find Him? Where in all this vast creation can we see the face of
its creator? Nowhere!

   The Soviets sent cosmonauts in a spaceship spinning around the earth
and they came back saying He wasn't out there. They looked for Him, but
saw no paradise, no angels, no Heavenly Father - nothing but space and
emptiness. You wonder how they missed Him in the glory of the skies and
the grandeur of His creations. You wonder if they expected Him to catch
their little balloon and throw it back, or hold it in His hand.

   There's a story going the rounds among Christian people in Russia
that one day the Kremlin sent up a satellite and it didn't come back,
and they were worried about that. Then a few days later a few of them
hung around the pearly gates and asked St. Peter, "Sir, we don't want
to come in, but please can we have our ball back?"

   When we turn to the great immensities we have to say with Isaiah,
"Verily, thou art a God that Hidest thyself."

   But it need not take long to know and feel Him. When we turn to
Jesus Christ, the God who hid himself from Isaiah reveals Himself in
the person of His Son. No one must wait, nor seek in vain, God may be
known. He can be experienced. He is not far away. When we repent of our
sin and believe in Jesus, God becomes our Father. Through the Holy
Spirit He lives in us - in the same house, our bodies. "In Him we move
and have our being."

   Jesus said that anyone that saw Him, saw the Father also. When
Christ came to Earth, God came down and lived among men. The same Lord
Jehovah that created the heavens and the earth walked the dusty paths
of Galilee, died upon a Roman cross and rose again 3 days after His
death. God is not way out there somewhere; not far off and unknowable,
but Here and Now.

   The Apostle John wrote, "That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life." (1 John 1:1)
Remember, Jesus is God. He did not become God, He was in the beginning
with God and He was God.

   Do you really want to know God? Then open your life to Jesus. Be a
for-Real Jesus person. Read your Bible. Talk to Jesus many times each
day. And the better acquainted with Jesus you become, the more you will
know about God.