Hidden God

I just finished reading Lauren Winner's book Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis. Of course, the fact that it had the term "mid-faith crisis" in it is what caught my attention, because I don't think any other term could better describe where I'm at right now. There were many things she said that I found myself able to relate to, but I think the most profound thing is what she quoted a rabbi as saying during the Jewish holiday of Purim:

“All throughout Torah, we find people looking for God, and not finding God, because God doesn't often conform to our expectations. God is somewhere other than the place we think to look, and our sages show that you can respond to God's hiddenness in many different ways. You can, like the writer of Lamentations, respond to god's hiddenness by mourning. Or, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, instead of asking where the god you thought you were looking for had gone, ask what god is like now. Or you can respond to god's hiddenness by being like Esther: if God is hiding, then you must act on God's behalf. If you look around the world and wonder where God has gone, why God isn't intervening on behalf of just and righteous causes, your very wondering may be a nudge to work in God's stead.” 
― Lauren F. Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

Sometimes God is hidden. He is not recognizable in the same way that He used to be. You do not meet him in the same places that you used to go to meet Him. He does not speak through the same people or books or Bible verses that He used to. Somewhere along the way, your relationship with Him has changed and you realize you're not quite sure who He is anymore, but you're also not quite sure who you are anymore either. You have to get to know each other again, ask each other new questions, tell each other new stories, and be willing to experience what is uncomfortable and unexpected. It is a time to refocus and reevaluate your relationship and your purpose, and these same questions come up over and over and over: Where are you, God? What are you like now? Why aren't you intervening?

I of course don't know all of the answers to these questions. If I did, I wouldn't be in a mid-faith crisis, but I can trust that though God is hidden now, there will come a time when He will reveal Himself. Maybe it will happen a little at a time, maybe it will happen all at once, but He will reveal Himself. And in the meantime, He is still here. Listening to my frustrations. Healing my brokenness. Leading me in a long, seemingly never-ending journey of what it means to trust when my faith fails.