Is God on Vacation?

With the suffering of Haiti, the death of my Dad, and many other sad things on my mind… these words from Michael Horton were a great encouragement to me.

*We do not help others or ourselves in times of crisis when we fail to realize that there is more to salvation than we have yet experience. Our destiny is secured, but this does not make us immune to the tragedies that mark our pilgrim way.

Even the apparent absence of God in this in-between time is the very opposite of what it appears to be to the world – or to our own unbaptized experience, catechized by the world to believe that tragedies have no clear origin (except perhaps in political missteps) and therefore no hope of being part of a master plan. Faced with injustice, rapacity, poverty, cruelty, suffering, and unrelenting news of crisis, our age thinks that God, if there is such a being, has taken a long vacation. And, we have to admit, it looks like that on the surface of things. We rarely hear about a massacre in a remote village or a devastating earthquake and conclude a week later, “Oh, now we understand why God allowed it.” It almost never makes sense – and that is fine, because we are not God. We do not need to add to the insult of tragedy the injury of expecting people to discern something that might make the event more rational or acceptable. Without the announcement of the gospel in special revelation – without reading nature and history in the light of Christ – natural revelation, including human experience, would not conclude that there is a gracious God.

Actually, if God were to prove the scoffers wrong immediately, they would not have the opportunity to repent. It is his patience, says Peter, that keeps his judgment at bay. Whenever we wonder why God does not act in the world to end this or that injustice, let us ask ourselves whether we have thanked God for not yet bringing about the judgment that will make everything right and undo the evil to which we have contributed in our own way. Are we grateful that he is patiently enduring evil and suffering for the very sake of people such as us, who would otherwise have been on the receiving end of his swift justice? Now that we are safely in the ark, are we so eager to have the door closed on our loved ones and neighbors? The renewal of all things and the end of pain will be preceded by the last judgment. While we do  indeed wait eagerly for the age to come, we revel also in God’s patience, that in-between time in which God graciously draws sinners to himself…

Let us never forget that when the world saw God at his weakest moment – the Father hiding his face from the humiliated and guilt-laden Son – God was performing his greatest act of redemption, beside which the exodus pales in comparison. And so, even now, where the world can only see God’s absence, we, by faith, see God’s saving presence. As Jesus told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Peter tells us that while the world recognizes only another opportunity to scoff at God’s apparent absence, the church sees this as God’s loving nearness.

The world in its unbelief should not long for God’s presence and justice, because when he does appear this second time, it will be in glory and judgment. But for now the church sees God’s presence hidden under the form of absence, bringing the lost to a saving sight of the Crucified by the preached cross: “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23). Just when it looks as if God has taken a long vacation from the world, he has been and is still actually busy building his kingdom, and even the gates of hell will not be able to withstand his mighty work. Behind the scenes he is reconciling the wicked to himself and to each other. – Michael Horton, Too Good To Be True