For the past few weeks I have been meeting with a few other men (fewer as the weeks progress) for a Tuesday morning breakfast and Bible discussion. It isn’t an in-depth Bible Study, but a spiritual discussion guided by the book Chasing God With Three Flat Tires from Navpress. I’m not to hip on the “The Message” translation used for the Bible texts in the book, but the guide does raise a few thought-provoking questions.

Today, we were covering a section that includes an excerpt from Frederick Buechner’s Telling the Truth. With the excerpt is Buechner’s assertion that God “is often more conspicuous by his [sic] absence than by his [sic] presence…” That got to me to thinking (as if I ever really stop thinking).

At no time and in no place are the mercies, the grace, the love, and the benefits of God so noticeable than when and where they are absent. In times of severe tragedy, the practical atheist often asks, “Where was God?” It’s not a question that they would normally ask, just one that comes to mind when they see the seeming absence of those things that they suppose that God should provide – at least to the extent that they would shelter us from the effects of sin and the cursed Earth.

I submit to you that it is those times of trial that increase our recognition and hopefully an appetite for the tender mercies of the Almighty. Consider the Hebrews in Egypt’s bondage that cried out for decades for deliverance. Consider the indelible faith of Christian brothers and sisters under severe hardship in places like the Sudan. Even consider the description in Romans chapter 1 of those that have dismissed any notion of the true God. In Proverbs 17:1, we read, “Better is a dry morsel with quietness than a house full of feasting with strife.” How profound is that!

“For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” – Psalm 84:10 (NKJV)